Nurse takes down Keeley Hawes’ claim TV life is just like NHS worker’s struggles

EXHAUSTED from a 12-hour night shift, nurse Sandy Hine dashes home to look after her grandchildren before starting her second job as a cleaner.

The 56-year-old’s hectic life could not be further away from that of Bodyguard star Keeley Hawes, who this week said she was “exactly the same” and “identical” to a nurse.

Today Sandy — who has worked on the front line of the NHS for 30 years — has branded the millionaire actress’s comments as “ridiculous” — saying: “Keeley’s world couldn’t be further removed from mine.”

Hard-working Sandy, who has two kids and four grandchildren, added: “We’re on different planets. I work with patients who have cancer, people who are dying of cancer. It is ­emotionally draining. It wears you out.

“With the greatest of respect, Keeley Hawes isn’t dealing with any of that.

“To contrast the job of a nurse with a TV actress is ridiculous.”

Mum-of-three Keeley, 43, who starred in ITV1 hit The Durrells and is married to Ripper Street actor Matthew Macfadyen, was talking about fame when she ­compared herself to a nurse in a Radio Times interview.

She said: “I don’t live in a bubble. I live in a world with three children and paying a mortgage, worrying about the world, my family, my friends. That’s the real bubble in your life. Everybody, whatever you do, if you’re a nurse, you go into that little bubble.”

And when the interviewer asked her if she was comparing her job to the nursing profession, she said: “We’re exactly the same, we’re identical.”

RUBBISH PAY

Keeley owns a home in South West London estimated to be worth £2.25million, employed a nanny to look after her young kids and flew her family out to see her during four-month stints in Corfu while filming The Durrells.

It is a stark contrast to the modest lives of Sandy and many of the nation’s 700,000 other nurses.

Sandy, who earns £25,000 a year, took 20 years to pay off the mortgage on her £190,000 four-bed semi in Southport, Merseyside. She has been a community nurse for seven years following more than two decades as a health care assistant. She said: “The reality of being a nurse is totally different, it’s incredibly tough. It’s graft, pure graft. It’s not glamorous. In fact, it is the opposite of glamorous. The pay is rubbish, it’s nowhere near enough for what is expected of you.

“I have no idea why Keeley Hawes said what she did. I don’t know how much money she is on, but one thing’s for sure, it will be much more than me.

“For one thing, we don’t get to swan off to glamorous locations like Corfu. We are based in the same place, day after day.

“I look after patients who are dying. I sit with them as they take their final breaths. I have to break the news to relatives that their loved one has passed away.”

Sandy juggles her nursing job with her role as a grandmother, looking after children aged three, five and seven. Her eldest grandchild is 21.

She regularly works 12-hour shifts — staying behind voluntarily for up to three hours after nine-hour shifts to care for patients who are dying.

Sandy, who lives with her partner, 61, a plumber, added: “You can’t just leave a dying patient. I do this job because I like to help people and I want to make a difference, but it is far from easy. We do absolutely everything for the patients. We look after their ­personal care and administer ­injections and medication.

“We deal with blood and guts on a daily basis. Just last week I treated a woman who was covered in cancerous tumours, which were bleeding.

“This is what it is like when you are dealing with dying people. It’s gory work, and certainly not for the faint of heart.

“It’s not like the world of an actress, who I imagine will have a whole entourage behind her, doing her make-up and hair and the luxury of a nanny to care for kids.”

Sandy’s experiences as a nurse include a dying car crash victim whose “arm was hanging off” as he was brought into A&E. She said: “He was in a very bad state. Everyone tried so hard to bring him back, but we just couldn’t.

“Another time, a man came in to A&E who had been beaten with a mallet then locked in a safe. He was in a hell of a state.”

To make ends meet, Sandy does the cleaning job in her time off.

The extra work allows her to scrape together enough cash to take her grandchildren on holiday and also save — months in advance — to buy Christmas presents.

Sandy said: “I like to have nice things just like anyone, but I work extremely hard for every penny I earn. I am not an extravagant person but I wouldn’t be able to live the way I do without my extra job.

“Nursing is simply not enough of a wage for me to be able to do the things I want to do, which is why I clean during the day.

“It does leave me exhausted, and when I do go on holiday I spend so much of my time asleep because I am so tired.

BACK-BREAKING WORK

“I can’t imagine Keeley Hawes getting a cleaning job in order to pay for a holiday or buy a nice pair of trousers.”

She added: “It’s not just me who struggles on a nurse’s salary, my colleagues do too. Most find it very difficult to get on the property ladder or even buy a car.”

Sandy trained as a nurse at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, ­Lancs, funding her degree from bank work. She did her training in an A&E hospital but now her community nurse role sees her visiting seriously ill and dying patients in their homes. It is also her responsibility to verify some of her patients’ deaths.
She is now one of just 4,000 ­district nurses in the UK — a workforce that has been slashed by 43 per cent in the past decade.

Sandy added: “The truth is, the work is so back-breaking, people no longer want to do it.

“You get young people training but once they qualify they don’t get jobs working for the NHS.

“A lot will end up doing beauty work, administering treatments such as Botox.

“It’s changed a lot since I first started working for the NHS. It’s much worse than it used to be. I understand why people don’t want to be nurses any more.

“With budget cuts, our jobs are even harder. If a patient needs to go to hospital and I call an ambulance it can take hours to­ come. This is stressful and ­distressing when you are ­looking after someone who is frightened and in pain.”

Keeley, who starred with Richard Madden in BBC1’s Bodyguard last year, tried to row back from her interview comments this week, insisting she was not trying to compare her life to a nurse’s.

In a tweet she claimed to have been misquoted and added: “I did not compare myself to a nurse. I would not compare myself to a nurse any more than I would compare myself to a nuclear physicist.”

But for Sandy the damage had been done.

She said: “Keeley obviously has absolutely no clue what she is talking about and no idea what the reality of being a nurse actually is.

“She is referring to two people who are on completely different planets. They should get us together in a room.

“I would be able to teach her a thing or two about what it’s really like to be a nurse.”