Nurse who helped to save Boris Johnson's life quits in protest at treatment

Jenny McGee was one of two intensive-care nurses who gave Mr Johnson round-the-clock treatment a year ago

File photo: New Zealand nurse Jenny McGee speaks about her efforts to help save coronavirus patient British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. TVNZ via AP

A nurse credited with helping to save Prime Minister Boris Johnson's life last year has quit the UK health service in protest at the government's lack of "respect" for frontline staff.

New Zealand-born Jenny McGee was one of two intensive-care nurses who gave Mr Johnson treatment around the clock a year ago in a central London hospital when he was struck down with Covid-19.

He said later that he pulled through only because of their care, but his government has since faced anger from nurses for offering a pay rise of only 1 per cent, which is effectively a cut, after inflation.

"We're not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve," Ms McGee told a Channel 4 TV documentary to be broadcast next Monday.

"I'm just sick of it. So I've handed in my resignation."

She refused to take part in a Downing Street photo opportunity last July, saying: "Lots of nurses felt that the government hadn't led very effectively – the indecisiveness, so many mixed messages."

"It was just very upsetting."

Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour party, said Ms McGee's resignation was a "devastating indictment of Boris Johnson's approach to the people who put their lives on the line for him and our whole country".

But Downing Street said: "This government will do everything in our power to support" staff of the National Health Service, stressing they had been excluded from a pay freeze affecting other public-sector workers.

In the documentary, Ms McGee said it was "surreal" seeing the prime minister in her hospital.

"All around him there were lots and lots of sick patients, some of whom were dying," she recalled.

"I remember seeing him and thinking he looked very, very unwell. He was a different colour, really.

"They are very complicated patients to look after and we just didn't know what was going to happen."

A worse wave of the pandemic hit Britain in the winter, and Ms McGee said the situation on her wards leading up to Christmas "was just a cesspool of Covid".

"At that point, I don't know how to describe the horrendousness of what we were going through," she said.

On Tuesday, Ms McGee said she planned to take up a new nursing job in the Caribbean, but hoped to return to the NHS in the future.

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