<p>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.</p>.<p>New Zealand-born Jenny McGee was one of two intensive-care nurses who gave Johnson round-the-clock treatment a year ago in a central London hospital when he was struck down with Covid-19.</p>.<p>The prime minister said later that he only pulled through thanks to their care, but his government has since faced fury from nurses for offering a pay rise of just one per cent -- effectively a cut, after inflation.</p>.<p>"We're not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve. I'm just sick of it. So I've handed in my resignation," McGee says in a Channel 4 television documentary airing next Monday.</p>.<p>She refused to take part in a Downing Street photo opportunity last July, noting: "Lots of nurses felt that the government hadn't led very effectively, the indecisiveness, so many mixed messages.</p>.<p>"It was just very upsetting."</p>.<p>Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour party, said 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".</p>.<p>But a Downing Street spokesperson said "this government will do everything in our power to support" staff of the National Health Service (NHS), stressing they had been excluded from a pay freeze affecting other public sector workers.</p>.<p>In the documentary, McGee says it was "surreal" seeing the prime minister in her hospital.</p>.<p>"All around him there was lots and lots of sick patients, some of whom were dying," she recalled.</p>.<p>"I remember seeing him and thinking he looked very, very unwell. He was a different colour really.</p>.<p>"They are very complicated patients to look after and we just didn't know what was going to happen."</p>.<p>A worse wave of the pandemic hit Britain in the winter months, and McGee said the situation on her wards leading up to Christmas "was just a cesspool of Covid".</p>.<p>"At that point, I don't know how to describe the horrendousness of what we were going through," she said.</p>.<p>In a statement Tuesday, McGee said she plans to take up a new nursing job in the Caribbean, but hopes to return to the NHS in the future.</p>
<p>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.</p>.<p>New Zealand-born Jenny McGee was one of two intensive-care nurses who gave Johnson round-the-clock treatment a year ago in a central London hospital when he was struck down with Covid-19.</p>.<p>The prime minister said later that he only pulled through thanks to their care, but his government has since faced fury from nurses for offering a pay rise of just one per cent -- effectively a cut, after inflation.</p>.<p>"We're not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve. I'm just sick of it. So I've handed in my resignation," McGee says in a Channel 4 television documentary airing next Monday.</p>.<p>She refused to take part in a Downing Street photo opportunity last July, noting: "Lots of nurses felt that the government hadn't led very effectively, the indecisiveness, so many mixed messages.</p>.<p>"It was just very upsetting."</p>.<p>Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour party, said 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".</p>.<p>But a Downing Street spokesperson said "this government will do everything in our power to support" staff of the National Health Service (NHS), stressing they had been excluded from a pay freeze affecting other public sector workers.</p>.<p>In the documentary, McGee says it was "surreal" seeing the prime minister in her hospital.</p>.<p>"All around him there was lots and lots of sick patients, some of whom were dying," she recalled.</p>.<p>"I remember seeing him and thinking he looked very, very unwell. He was a different colour really.</p>.<p>"They are very complicated patients to look after and we just didn't know what was going to happen."</p>.<p>A worse wave of the pandemic hit Britain in the winter months, and McGee said the situation on her wards leading up to Christmas "was just a cesspool of Covid".</p>.<p>"At that point, I don't know how to describe the horrendousness of what we were going through," she said.</p>.<p>In a statement Tuesday, McGee said she plans to take up a new nursing job in the Caribbean, but hopes to return to the NHS in the future.</p>