Whittington Health: This is what we do

Introduction

Slater King - Sep 2020 London The first time that I entered the hospital, I must say, I was scared. We’d been seeing in news reports from all around the world how health care services were being overwhelmed, death figures were sky rocketing, and there was a palpable ‘end of the world’ feeling scratching away at our senses.

George Floyd’s murder had just sparked global protests, and while Trump hadn’t yet sent unidentifable paramilitaries onto the streets to snatch people, American police were driving their vehicles into crowds of pedestrians, and were brutally targeting peaceful protests.

Here in this country, while Johnson’s government hadn’t yet said on record that they would readily break international law, the PPE shortages were still ongoing, Covid rules were in flux, and the government’s most senior aide had tested his eyesight with a 60 mile drive in the country - which to many, signalled the end of lockdown.

And so walking into the hospital, I remember feeling worried and scared. The climate controlled corridors, the shinny floors and the soft tread shoes, all heightened a feeling of otherworldliness. The usual timpani clatter of a working hospital was muted by the absence of the patients and their relatives wandering the floors, the staccato sounding children noticeable by their absence. The beds swished past, but only accompanied by sky blue walls and white ceilings.

And I kept asking the people that I photographed, how did they will their feet, one after another, to carry them here, day after day? Why weren’t they at home? Why didn’t they choose to shield themselves, as most at that time were doing?

I recorded our conversations, transcribed them, and edited them to make these ‘as told to’ stories. Their answers are as varied as the people, but perhaps from this collection of points and individuals, a picture floats free.

And that would be of their ability to care for other people. Whether they were porters or surgeons, that mere fact required them to put their own well-being behind that of others. Their belief that caring for others is the right, proper and just, it seems to me, led to their actions.

I hope that this project does not only do justice to those within - the failing of which is one of my greatest fears but also shows the scale and numbers of people who are caring and decent, who are kind, compassionate, honest and skilled.

To those people, my greatest thanks for helping be a part of this collection, and to them, my deepest admiration.

Mihir Sanghvi

Specialty Registrar - Cardiology It’s been obviously very challenging, not just from a professional perspective, but also personally. I haven’t seen my parents for quite a while, and I haven’t seen my extended family either.

My wife’s pregnant, and we don’t know how Coronavirus affects pregnancy - we don’t know whether I’ve had it, I don’t know whether she’s had it, and it’s difficult to determine whether we should even be living together still, or whether we should be living apart. We are in a place where there is the biggest exposure risk in the entire country: a hospital in which there are lots of Coronavirus patients.

But whatever your personal feelings on the matter, ultimately, you’ve been trained to try to deal with these sorts of situations and so you focus your mind and you get on with the job in hand. This is not something that we wanted to do, but it’s something that’s arisen.

And I can certainly say that everyone from this department has risen to the challenge extremely well.

Cleveland Shaw DTC Endoscopy

You’re given a choice in life. We should take this experience of covid, and try to make life better for everybody else, you know - overlook the differences, overlook the madness. Just try to treat people who are different with love and understanding and tolerance. Without that you can’t understand where they’re coming from, and what they dealing with.

You know, it could be sickness, it could be family problems, or financial problems.

I have seen so many different cases in the hospital. And I’ve really come to the fact that at any given time, anyone can have these problems. It could be your neighbour, your friend, your family - but you have to deal with it. It is life. You have to think, what can I do for this person? If you give your heart and your soul to this person, trying to get him well, you will help. Like when people come out of the theatres, for example I might tell them: look, man, start eating good foods - as a lot of people here eat fast foods - and it’s not helping them. So I’m always trying to help somebody, you know, it makes me feel good inside.

Covid was like, being at the front of a war. Certain part of the wards you couldn’t get into. It was tense at moments, was really tense. Everybody was running around frantic, trying to understand what’s really happening. I’ve been in situations like this before, like when we had a few spots of Ebola in the hospital. But for this, it was more in your face because everything was happening so fast. You couldn’t touch nothing. You couldn’t go to certain areas without mask on. You have to know what you could do where you are.

But I never thought I’m not coming into the hospital. No, no, I always was here. Because as long as you’re geared up, you know, you come into work, this becomes like a thing you can’t really back out of, but you know, you’re dedicated to this kind of work, to recovery, saving lives, whatever it might be - you here, so there’s no turning back when you come through that door. Should I take the day off or whatever? With me I don’t have that. I’m glad to be here.

We had a friend who work in the decon area, he’s called Cardinal. He was in the ITU for like more than a month with covid.

First we heard it was like one week. And then, wait a minute, he’s been there two week, three week. So everybody was rooting and just waiting to hear what was happening with him. After two months, they then let him out. And that, that touched home.

And then we had another porter, he died. His name is Nick. I saw him the Wednesday, and then Monday I came back in and somebody says ‘wait, you know Nick’s dead?’ And I said, what Nick you talking about? They say Nick. What, Nick dead? My bredrin Nick, I just spoke to him - dead? That just hit me right here, in the heart you know.

Joshua Gladman Junior Doctor

I’ve kind of got used to covid as an idea and as a disease, and so the fear component has largely gone. But if I think back to where I was 2 months ago, that was very different, it was very stressful. I was worried to a degree for my own safety and certainly worried about my family. There were times when I thought I really would rather not be going in to work or I envied people who could stay at home, and I thought it would be lovely to just be able to run away from it all. I had to force myself to confront it. And I did. I think, it was something I had to overcome. It’s weird because I think I’ve almost forgotten that I had to do that, because it’s all become so normal, although it’s not a good normal.

Even at the very peak of the crisis I, and some doctors might disagree with me on this, but I still feel that I was relatively lucky in the sense that my role allows a degree of … not detachment, but I think it’s easier for doctors to step away from difficult scenarios. There are certain groups that have had it really, really tough, I think, particularly the nurses looking after the same patient who’s deteriorating day after day and spending prolonged periods, hours and hours and hours with those patients in bays where they’re receiving cpap and other forms of more intensive treatment.

I think, even at the time I realised that I could pop in and review the patient and then I get to leave, I get to kind of detach myself, I get to see other patients, I get to talk to colleagues. I just have so much admiration for them. And then there are other groups like the physiotherapists. I don’t think they get mentioned anywhere near as much as they should.

When it exploded here, and when we were doing cpap, it was the physios that really drove that, and were managing and coordinating that. They were absolutely incredible. Again, they deserve so much credit. I was supposed to be working nights and weekends, and maybe I did slightly more, but lots of members of staff had to step up to doing that and had to have a really big upheaval in how they work. What I went through was a challenge, but I think I was partly able to rise to that challenge because I could see that my colleagues, some of whom were having to rise to a much greater challenge, managed to do so really commendably.

I think some people, loads of people, have just been incredible and fantastic and I’m full of admiration for them, I really am.

Henrietta Madaras-Tucsa Radiographer

The rules changed day by day, so we never know what’s going to happen the next day. But we managed to work nicely as a team, it’s mostly with the nurses and doctors from A&E, and we’ll try to help each other, you know like calm ourselves down and give support to each other. I think it brought us together.

It didn’t really matter if it was day or night, mostly there were two people here, so it was a bit better than to have to do all these things on your own. We didn’t really have time to think about things, because it was so constant. It was a big rush, the phone was ringing all the time. We have these portable machines outside, so we just went back and forth to ED all day, or ITU. Going into ITU, first we have to put the full PPE on. We go in and out, but the medics there stay inside for their 12 hour shifts, and so they wear the full PPE - the mask with the filter, the eye cover and then the gown - for the whole 12 hours. It was very hot in there, and noisy with all the machines bleeping all around the place.

We try to find our patient, because it is a bit crowded, and then we set everything up. Usually the patients are unconscious so we ask somebody to come and help us hold the tubes, lift the patients up or sit them up, and then we have this board which we put underneath the patient, bring the camera, and then we have the image.

That’s the ITU, but in the ED, patients come in, they have a pre assessment, the doctors say, ok probably this patient has covid, and then they ask for X rays. Most of the patients were quite sick, they were coughing a lot, have fever and they have pain everywhere.

Then the image will come up on the screen. It looks like white bubbles on the image. It’s like circles, white circles all around the lungs, probably 70 - 80% of the time we saw this. It could be young people like in their 20s, 30s or old people who have other diseases. I was worried what’s going to happen to them.

It was a very tiring period. I don’t think about it now, no, not really. It feels like it never even happened.

Sometimes I’m a tiny bit scared when I’m travelling but when we were here, we didn’t really have time to think about what’s going to happen.

Deme Mohamed Housekeeping

I like helping people. That’s why I enjoy my job, portering.

I push people to the wards, and I talk to them, and make them comfortable. I just make them laugh so they forget their problems.

You see, when someone comes into hospital, they’re not happy at all. They worry, and often they’re in pain. And so I just take some time talking with them, and actually finding where they’re from, what language they speak, and I try to speak their language if I can.

I ask their name, I try to joke and make them forget their problems so they can be comfortable. I like to always make them smile Talking to them can change their world.

Consolate Nimbona

Haematology Blood Transfusion.

At the moment there is no certainty about the safety of what we do. We just try to follow the government guidance, the infection control advice, and then we keep coming to work instead of staying at home, because if we stay at home we will keep thinking I might have it, I might have it, and miss work. In here, we’re still busy.

Though I do feel stressful, like any anybody who is working here in the hospital, because we don’t know how we might catch it. Any blood sample that we receive is suspicious, because we don’t know. It’s stressful, but we have to keeping going on. Everybody has got their own knowledge to give to the community, and I believe that as an NHS worker at the present moment, we are doing the best that can be done, because without us I don’t know how it could be.

Duane Callender

Pharmacy Store Keeper What we need to start doing is looking after ourselves a lot more than we did in the past. We need to have good exercise and start eating healthy, try and keep our bodies alkaline because as long as you have an alkaline body, you’re not going to get sick. I’m a vegetarian and also take a lot of good herbs like thyme, garlic, rosemary - I drink that stuff in the morning for breakfast so me personally, I have no fear for covid.

We’ve been told to eat loads of junk - a lot of sugary stuff that builds acid in the stomach and within the body. You’re not actually doing what you should be doing by having all those sweets and bad stuff - you know, the human body wasn’t designed for that. So we need to go back to nature and stick with our natural stuff. And that would help to keep our body alkaline and as long as you have an alkaline body, you stand a good chance of fighting off anything To get to work wasn’t an issue for me. No matter what, pandemic might be on, but I’ll do what I have to do to get into work. I have no worries for the hospital, but I am worried for the staff members as they might be under added pressure. In my view, covid is not actually going to go anywhere. It’s just going to get worse, you know? And if I’m allowed to say, we have a government that doesn’t tell us the truth as well. That’s why you see a lot of people panicking for no reason. I think it’s going to get worse when the flu season starts back in September.

They’ll claim that covid is back, and it’s going to have a lot more restrictions for us.

The world has changed - it’s not going to get back to what it used to be, it’s just going to get worse. We’re going to have more rules and restrictions. A lot of our freedoms are already being taken away. It’s depressing, because who wants to be told what to do every single time, like how to travel, how to eat, how to come to work, who you should speak to and who should come to your house. And we’re going to be taught to do a lot of stuff that a lot of us are not going to be happy to do. It’s not even law that we comply to these rules and regulations, but we’re just going to have to at some point.

Catherine Spelman

Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner It’s always hugely stressful to be separated from your baby and not be there with them 24 / 7. We’ve had to restrict the parent’s visiting, though they shouldn’t even be classed as visiting because they’re their children. You feel very, very guilty having to say to a parent your visiting slot is between 11 and 3, and that they have to go at 3 o’clock because the parent next to them is visiting from 3 to 7. We do encourage parents to go home and eat and sleep, but now we have a situation where the child is still incredibly sick and we’re saying you can’t visit them. How can you explain that to somebody?

I don’t like doing that - I feel like I’m being a prison officer and that’s not what we’re here for we’re here to try and get parents to bond with their children, and children to bond with their parents. The worst thing about covid is that it’s separated families. We’ve had potentially covid babies - they turned out to be negative but they had to be treated as positive because their mothers were positive.

I know some members of staff have had families die. They’ve had family members in the ITU and they haven’t been able to visit them. I feel for that and I feel that there’s a lot of stuff that’ll come out later for people. They’ve had to send children to school as they’re key workers, not necessarily having a choice in it. Yes, it was lovely that the government kept the schools open, and I don’t know whether that was because they wanted the key workers to be at work, because otherwise the country would have ground to a halt, but some of those key workers might have actually quite liked not to go to work - to have stayed at home and isolated instead because they were worried about their families.

I wasn’t able to go home and see my family. And that was hard for me. And my mother was sick at the beginning of covid and I didn’t know whether or not she had it or whether she would die or not and that was very distressing, it’s still distressing. My family all live in Ireland.

My family don’t live here.

Some of my nursing colleagues here have been told to go back to where they came from, because they’re of Oriental looking origin and then there’s people out there clapping and you wonder which ones of those were the ones that insulted them on the way to work?

Deborah Wasley

Matron - Emergency Department I had three weeks off at home with covid, and knowing the pressures that everyone’s under here at work while I was at home was awful. I was itching to come back, and when I came back, reality hit. Though we knew it was coming, and prepared for it, until you’re really in it, you can’t … it’s unprecedented.

Seeing the staff, how hard they were working, having to wear PPE in the sweltering hot weather, masks all day, getting rashes from wearing them, getting imprints around their ears, and just seeing how demoralised they felt. Normally the nurses that would walk around with smiles on their faces no longer were, or they were hidden because of the masks. Dealing with that as their overall manager, it’s very difficult. I think people think as an A&E matron, you have the skills to deal with anything, and myself and the other matron have learned we don’t - we’re human too. We feel it too, we felt their pain.

I didn’t think about caring for myself for a long time, a long time! And only in the last three to four weeks, I’ve realised if I haven’t got any fuel in my tank, I cannot look after others. But the nurses, what they don’t know, is they support us as seniors, just seeing them - they’re smiling, happy, hearing them giggling in the staff room, that then puts a smile on my face and they don’t realise that. It’s lovely. We have really supported each other during this. I wouldn’t want to be in another team.

The majority of our nursing teams are in their 20s and we’re asking them to them build up skills and be resilient in a time when they’re not seeing their loved ones and family members, or are perhaps separated from their children while staying in hotels, but then they’re having to come to work and to put that aside, and look after other people’s relatives, who are then dying. They’re having to facilitate goodbyes via telephone, which no one should ever have to do.

It’s affecting everyone within the trust, you can see it and feel it as you walk around the hospital. But we have built relationships.

Even giving someone a smile in the corridor, and just knowing when you catch each other’s eyes, just getting that glimpse of I know what you’re going through, and I’m here. You might not know who I am, but we’re feeling it too.

You can see people that previously would have stood taller, are just a bit more within themselves, and you can feel that, but that’s ok. We’ll get through it. We will get through it and we will rise again. And if another peak happens, we’ll be more prepared.

As leaders people think we just lead, we tell people what we expect and people do it. My way of working is that the staff on the on the shop floor have the best ideas - they’re doing it day in day out, I’m not - and so it’s a collective decision. How do we get there together? Not how do I tell you to get there? How do we get there together, from all grades across the board, everyone’s opinion needs to be taken on board.

Emma O’Lone Physiotherapist

Things have definitely settled down now. When I look back, I think it was just kind of a fight or flight thing, you just got on it. I mean, not that you didn’t have a choice, but you felt obligated to do whatever you could do. I’m now the only person left that was redeployed, but I’m going to be staying in this in this team.

As therapists and physiotherapists, we care but also sometimes, especially on acute settings like this, what we do isn’t always pleasant. People don’t enjoy being suctioned, it’s not a nice process, but the end goal is to make them better. Some patients understand that, some patients don’t. It takes a lot of reassurance - it’s the tone of your voice, your mannerisms.

When passing their bed, even if you’re not going to see them, it’s like, hi John how’s things - just building that rapport is so massively important, and just letting them know that you’re a nice person - what you’re going to do might not be the most pleasant but, at the end of it, they will hopefully feel better because of it.

The biggest challenge, even now, is the masks because you can’t smile at patients. I find I’m really trying to exaggerate through my eyes, to be like, hey :) Or with my voice, I’m really trying to be really up beat. Even if they’re not exceptionally ill, being told you have covid is obviously massively terrifying for them, so you want to be even more comforting, asking how are you doing today, chatting about family. Sometimes patients don’t want to get out of bed, they’re in pain, they’re absolutely exhausted, but you have get them to trust you, maybe more so during covid because you look so much more daunting. Sometimes you had a full one piece suit on, it went over your head, and you couldn’t actually hear because the plastic is so noisy. With the visor, your vision’s not 100% and you’re literally right up to the screens. You look like you’re going to go in to do open heart surgery on them, and all you want to do is sit them on the edge of the bed!

I’ve only been working for less than a year and my experience of being a professional has always been out in community, so this is kind of all I know in the hospital, if that makes sense.

I wasn’t here before when things were normal, so for me, this is my normal.

Annabel Brunner Junior Doctor

I would have been on my elective now in New York. I was due to spend six weeks there working in A&E after finishing medical school in March, and before starting work in August. I don’t have any problems with missing that - there are lots of people that have lost more than I have, and I look at it all in the context of a global pandemic.

By the time we started, things weren’t too bad or too hectic because the worst was over, but still the team is very supportive, and are very aware that this is the first time that we’re working. I also trained in this hospital, so my first clinical placement was actually on the wards here, on the same wards I’m working at now.

I like to concentrate on the positives. I think you can’t concentrate on the negatives too much - you need to construct the positives to keep going, one day at a time.

Leo Gonzales Ward Manager

I was in lockdown myself, in Manila. I went there for a holiday, the first week of March. There was covid in other countries but not the UK then. Lockdown in Manila was on the 15th, and I was due to return on the 26th but they cancelled my flights.

Watching CNN, I saw the deaths going up. 100 then 200 then 500 then thousands. There was no PPE - I kept contacting my colleagues: how are you guys, and they would say, oh, there’s no PPE, and I said do I need to go back?! Perhaps I’ll stay here by the pool, it’s 30 degrees, 40 degrees. My auntie was by herself, with the maids and the gardener, so I was having a fabulous life there. Although you’re locked down, you just pray with your auntie, do the rosary, and eat, and enjoy the sun. There weren’t any flights anyway, but I kept checking.

A rescue flight came up, but I’d booked already a different flight, and they cancelled that one too. My auntie was asking me, why do you want to go back, what we’re seeing is so scary, what with all these people dying. I was asking myself every night, and thinking I want to go, I don’t want to go, I want to go, I don’t want to go, until I said I just need to go back. Because I know I have the responsibility to look after vulnerable people, sick people - I don’t know, it’s just in my nature to care for people. I told her and she said with that reason, I don’t want to be selfish, you can go.

Back in the hospital I felt anxious, paranoid. I was ready, but I was very cautious, I had to observe all the precautions. And challenge people too because a person who’s coming from a covid ward will talk to you really closely. I said you have to protect yourself. Because you are exposed constantly, it’s becoming a norm. But I keep telling my colleagues every single day, look we will start to ease the lockdown and then everybody will be outside - you have to stay safe, protect yourself, protect others. Sometimes you forget that you have to look after yourself because your priority is others, and then suddenly, oh, wait how come I am not observing all the precautions?

Tola Badejo Priest

As humans, we’ve got to a point where we imagine we have answers, to all questions. But covid has very clearly shown that we don’t.

Why did the Black Lives Matters movement emerge now? Why during lockdown have we seen satellite pictures showing how clear and unpolluted our environments have become?

Going back to Genesis when God created humanity, the very first assignment he gave us was to look after the garden: to tend the garden; to look after the environment - that was our primary duty. We have a duty of stewardship towards the environment and humanity - we are not separate from Creation.

There is a lot of imbalance in power in the world, and so there is a lot of inequality in almost every aspect of our lives. The world economy as a whole is geared towards capitalism. The social, economic and political structures that we operate in globally, are geared that way, and the machine of capitalism is money driven.

The machine of faith is about the hearts of people - it is about finding that spiritual connection, it’s about understanding and finding something that is outside of ourselves, to help us as humans to connect to now, and to be relevant to our present circumstances.

Because spiritual essence, the spiritual machine, helps us to reconnect to those things that capitalism might necessarily take away from us, such as 9-5 working, investments and money, and all these routines of life - they take us away from the need to look inside ourselves. Connecting using the spiritual machine - some people talk about yoga, or talk about mindfulness, or talk about the many different types of therapy - that helps us to find something inside us.

Covid has put a break on this capitalistic machine. Covid has stopped it! And because it’s all stopped, we’ve found time to think, and see the benefits. Will we now recognise our responsibilities, as people like Greta Thunberg are helping us to? We need to bear that in mind otherwise we will destroy our lives.

Diana Waterton

Lead Nurse Pain Team I take to heart the pain of others, and that’s why I work in pain managemenat.

Normally a lot of my work is seeing patients after surgery, but suddenly there was no surgery.

I joined the Outreach Team to see patients on the ward that are critically unwell and assess them to see whether they need to come to intensive care. It was a big learning curve, but now it’s slowly getting back to a different kind of normal, and that’s hard as well because it’s all so different from before. I don’t know how long we could have sustained the work that we did.

At the end of the day, I’d ring my sister and just cry, and then get in the car and drive home.

Because I’ve got three young children and my husband’s a social worker, I just didn’t want to bring it all home to them - it wasn’t fair. So I spoke to my sister a lot, and had a few tears, then came home, maybe had a few more tears, helped with the children and that would be that.

The kids were worried about me, so I couldn’t say, oh my god, I had six patients dying today and they’re all really sick. I couldn’t offload like that, though I did with my husband a bit if and when the children couldn’t hear me. But so I’d listen to music on the way home in the car, speak to my sister, and that would be my way to try and leave the shop at the shop.

One thing that really helps was the camaraderie between the teams. I knew the outreach nurses over a number of years but got to know them very well in a very quick space of time.

We’ve also had a few sessions with a psychologist which was really good.

Doing this all again, would be … well, we would, of course we would, we’re nurses and doctors and that’s our role, but I think it’d be almost like going into a trauma again. It would just bring back a lot of memories. Of course we would do it differently. But I wouldn’t want to do it again.

Marlon Senga General Porter

We lost one of our colleagues, and that was the saddest part of it all.

In the beginning we felt like we deserved to be treated just like everybody else. But when there were PPE shortages, it was just for the doctors and the nurses because they are front line - but we are frontline as well because we’re in contact the patients all the time. And if it was running out, we just had to wait. It was tough, but now everything’s fine - now you can just go and grab anything you need.

I didn’t stay home when my ward was closed. I like to work you know, I like go all over. I was working double shifts, almost every single day, 16 hours a day, from 7 till 11 with a one hour break. It’s not easy, and if you do it three days in a row - you can end up exhausted.

We’re all looking after each other and with these kind of things - we’re all brothers and sisters. There’s no way it’s like ‘you’re working that side, you stay where you are’. No, we work all over the place. I’m not scared. I don’t want to stay home because I haven’t got a shift to do. If they can put me in, I’ll do anything.

Charlotte Cassis

Obstetrics and Gynaecology Registrar I think people are prepared to drop other aspects of their life. Obviously, it’s easier in a lockdown, but people are prepared to not see their friends and family as much, or to be present at home as much. At some stage it was thought that people working here might have to leave home and stay somewhere near the hospital so that they wouldn’t infect their families - and people were prepared to do things like that. That’s hugely selfless - and quite amazing.

I think there’s a sense of responsibility and a sense that we have the potential to change things - that even with a small action, you can make a bigger impact on what’s going on. It’s that sense that because you can do something to make a difference, you should. Though this does feel quite exceptional, and it’s not going to be your working life for the next 40 years.

That we all club together and act selflessly by working as much as required - by just getting on with it and doing whatever we possibly can do, to make a bad situation as good as it can be - is quite inspiring.

Kelly Abraham-Smith Clinical Psychologist

At times I didn’t really have much oxygen in my tank, I was really running low. As psychologists, we were being redeployed to support frontline staff, which was an honour.

But there was so much change and uncertainty in our roles. It felt like a sea of uncertainty, and at times it felt like I was drowning. At first I thought I was the only one in our team who was struggling but I later realised we were all just in action mode trying to cope, and there was actually so much shared struggle. Sharing our experiences with each other and working together through the challenges of Covid-19 is helping us to become an even more resilient and united team.

All areas of our lives are affected by Covid, and there are competing demands. When it started to get really tough I just thought, this is what it is, no one can do anything about it.

And so I had to find ways to self-care. Little things, like I started to learn to say no to nonessential things in my private life which took up more of my energy. I started not buying into the preconceived ideas in my own mind of how I should be coping right now, and decided to just go and survive and look after the mental health of me and my family, something that’s also needed for me to do my job well.

I’ve got to a point where I feel like I’m a lot tougher, or more accurately more assertive, in my stance in saying no sometimes and looking after myself, whereas weeks ago, I was taking on everything from all areas of my life and trying to do them really well. I’ve learned more than ever that I need oxygen in my tank to be able to help others.

Lizzie Marlow Physiotherapist

I’m a physiotherapist and I usually work in the musculoskeletal outpatient department. We had to close the service down fairly quickly without much warning so that the staff could be relocated to help in the areas where they were needed. Probably about 100 people were pulled in to the ITU, with a lot of those from my department. It was a massive shock because unfortunately the ITU didn’t have the time to give us training. So we sort of had to arrive, put the PPE on and then work it out, and help wherever we could.

It was completely overwhelming, but not through anyone’s fault and nothing to do with the hospital. It was just the whole situation and I’m sure every intensive care department in the country felt totally overwhelmed by the whole thing.

I remember just getting to the end of my first shift, it was a night shift, and I just remember getting to the end of it and thinking, I don’t know if I can do this. I was so drained. I felt in this constant state of anxiety, worrying what the alarms meant, or whether I had done something that could cause harm to a patient. It’s was so exhausting, though it got easier over time.

I found it really hard to unwind because I could still hear all the beeping and the alarms in my ears when I got home. I’d sit in a dark quiet room and could hear all the alarms going off in my mind. It took me ages to unwind and relax to any point where I could sleep, and I’d kind of repeat the events of the night, over and over in my head. Like, did I do something wrong? Was there something I could have done differently? It was very hard to relax and switch off after that.

I found it hard to work out what emotion I felt. Was it feeling really proud because I’d helped the nurses and the rest of the team and the patients? Was it fear? Was it sadness at everything that was happening and all the situations that all these patients were in? I couldn’t tap into what emotion it was - but it was a roller coaster.

In my usual job, I feel like I have a level of control, I can make decisions, and know what I’m doing. That all got thrown out the window on ITU. I was desperately wanting to help but not really sure how. The nurses were honestly incredible. In an ITU setting, normally they are 1 to 1 with the patients, but they just didn’t have the capacity to support that because of the volume of patients that were coming through. So not only were they dealing with much higher workloads, but they were trying to train unskilled workers at the same time. Seeing so many staff pushed to their absolute limits was really tough, especially the nurses who were doing 4 million things at once, whilst also trying to train us and help us.

I would find it hard to recall specific details now, I’ve just either forgotten it or put it in a box. It’s sort of this hazy thing that happened, almost like a bad dream. I struggled to pinpoint the emotions at the time and even reflecting back now, I think I find it hard. I feel a sense of pride for what we did, and how we all came together, and worked together, to help so many patients in such difficult situations.

I’m not convinced that I have processed it all yet. Maybe I’ve recognised it. I haven’t quite actioned it yet, but I’ve recognised it!

Muntaha Begum Pharmacist

From a medical perspective, it was unusual, because the ward I’m on is quite specialised with cardio meds and cardio patients, but it was patients from all backgrounds, everything. We work really well as a team together, and we’re all on the same level, I mean, no one’s better than the other, we’re all making sure that the patient’s well and ready to go home.

Emotionally it was just quite sad seeing the patients here and seeing them, some of them, deteriorate. Or seeing the family members trying to reach out to them, but can’t, because of the whole isolation. They understood why. I’d over hear the conversations between the patient and the nurse and the family members, and how it could be emotionally complicated sometimes.

That was quite difficult and sad at times. I think that was the hardest part for me.

Lizzy

Staff Nurse - Emergency Department I qualified 2 years ago, and obviously we weren’t trained for this because it’s a different kind of nursing. But we have come to understand and learn about it, and now we have the guidelines and protocols for suspected Covid 19 patients, and that’s really helped us understand how to deal with it. With that, there’s a calmness that’s come back. If it were to happen again, we’ll be ready.

Michael Thomson Biomedical Scientist

We had a complete shift over on to doing covid work. We worked out our teams, who was doing what, how we were going to do it, introduced new methods, rolled out the training superfast - everyone just kind of clicked into gear, it felt like we were part of something enormous.

And when we started rolling out staff testing, we had to test everyone who needed it as quickly as possible. We knew that the results were going to be critical for them in terms of how they do their important jobs, but also continue with their personal lives.

Getting that done was massively satisfying, and made me realise what a difference all of us are making in combating this pandemic. I’m proud to be a part of this fight against covid.

Dom Williams

Healthcare Assistant I actually started the role this month, so everything’s still quite new to me.

Coming into the ward, I was a bit worried I’ll be honest. Especially because I have an asthmatic mum at home. It’s not so much me, as the question, what am I bringing home - and so that’s why I just take it seriously with the PPE. When I come home, the first thing I’ll do is shoes off, say hello to everyone, and then straight to the shower, clean up, and put my clothes into the wash ... high wash, and all of those sorts of things. You can’t be too careful.

They’re ok with me doing this because they understand that I’m doing something positive, so they’re supportive, and they’re trying to make as many precautions as they can.

From back when I was at uni, I think the best thing that I’ve done is speaking about my problems. So if I’ve had a rough day, if I’m struggling with something, then just making it vocal rather than keeping it in helps. When you keep it in, that’s when I find you get a storm in your head, kind of thing.

It’s hard work, but I’m definitely trying to make a good habit of it because it does help.

Alan Shaw Consultant

What was very impressive to me during this crisis was just how many people took responsibility and said, ok, so this needs to be sorted out - I’m not going to wait to be told what to do, I’m just going to put myself forward. And then they’d create a new structure or a new way of working. I was really impressed with the amazing amount of initiative shown and how people were incredibly proactive, at all levels, not just consultants, but juniors, nurses and all staff. But I’m not surprised that these people do these things - we’re doing the same as we always do.

If you can employ people who have the right sort of carrying values, when the crisis hits, you can rely on those people to step up. Having spent 20 years in the NHS, though we haven’t had a crisis to the same extent, every night through the winter there’s a crisis. Every year there’s a rolling crisis, and the frustrating thing is that because it hasn’t really affected anyone else, no one has really taken notice of it.

The clapping leaves me a bit cold to be honest because I do feel that we’re being clapped for doing something that we’ve been going through in particular for the last 10 years. And I don’t want people just to clap. I want them to do more and I want them to say ok, so we need to change the political situation or the funding situation or to just think about it - what do we value in society? Who are the people who value? How do we value them? It’s not me, it’s the nurses, the porters - all these people who live on the breadline, and they need to be valued because these are the jobs that matter.

Some of my shifts on the front line were quite horrendous to be honest, because we just weren’t able to practice what we normally would. Usually when patients come in, and they’re at the point of death, they’ve got their family around them, you’re able to communicate, and prepare people. During the height of the covid situation, people were coming in completely alone. Dying. And you’re not able to prepare anyone. I had a particularly awful situation where I was seeing the patient dying in front of my eyes and having to speak to his wife at the same time, and it was horrific to be honest. I think there were some really traumatic experiences for everyone.

Rosie Sasson

Foundation Doctor It was a really incredible thing to be a part of, and something that I’m very proud of. I spoke to a lot of my friends who got furloughed or moved back home, and so many struggled with their mental health over lockdown and social distancing. Whereas I felt quite fortunate that I didn’t - I got to go to work and got to do something about this thing that everyone was so scared of. You’re in a very privileged position, being able to be proactive about it. It was quite an inspiring thing to be a part of.

In hindsight, it was always the anticipation of the unknown that I found the scariest. Actually doing the job and working in a covid ward wasn’t as bad as the anticipation - people were always saying the peak’s going to come, it’s only going to get worse, this is going to be really bad. That was what I found to be very anxiety provoking .

I was quite grateful for the fact that I was just a foundation doctor. Being in my first year, there wasn’t too much expectation of us. I definitely didn’t envy my seniors - the consultants doing night shifts for the first time in years, or registrars having to run the show at night. It was really difficult for them, but I was also very inspired with some of the doctors, I thought it incredible how they learnt so much about something that we barely knew anything about, and then were able to treat it so effectively.

I did find it scary though, watching people that have been doing this for a really long time, struggling. I thought, they’ve done it for so long and they’re so knowing and so good at their jobs, yet they don’t know what’s happening. The thing is, so much of where we went with it, the achievements that we made with it, all came from everyone trying their hardest, and I think that’s quite an impressive feat, to be honest.

Kate Russell

Paediatric Outpatients Everyone does it differently. I go home on the train so I have to listen to music to sort of shut off, to focus on something else. I don’t want to look at my social media accounts, because with social media everyone’s just talking about it. You want to get away from anything to do with covid as much as you possibly can, so I’ll just listen to nice music, have a little snooze on the train.

I knew at that time I needed to get into a mindset like Kate, where I’d look at this clearly, have a front view and think, ok, what is it you need to do, and how are you going to do it? Having that mindset, a sort of structured mindset, I think it’s about accepting what’s happening, saying ok, so this is what it is, and this is the new normal, we need to just get on with it.

Because it did affect me emotionally to start with, I was very anxious - I’m not gonna downplay it, it was overwhelming. I’ve only been qualified a year, and it felt like being thrown in at the deep end. I’d got myself in my comfort zone, and then suddenly I was out of that comfort zone again. But as a nurse, you have to be - you have to be flexible to new things and be open to new changes, it’s something that nurses have to do, it’s part of their job skill set.

Obviously the media was blowing up at that point saying, these are our heroes, everyone is relying on them, and so in my head I’d go home and I’d be like, everyone’s relying on me, oh my gosh! It kind of made me very emotional and anxious, but I think it has made me stronger because I feel like I can kind of cope with anything now. I’ve actually become a better person and I know that sounds really cliche and cringy but I do feel like I have become a better person, and stronger.

I think you sort of get a grasp of your identity. This whole situation makes you sort of realise who you are and what you want to do. Like, I know now that I want to be working in the NHS helping people. That’s how I feel like I’ve grasped a sense of belonging here.

Emily House FiY1 Doctor

It was a very emotionally draining and stressful period of time. I had, and I wasn’t alone in it, a feeling of guilt - of feeling like I was not doing enough. Just always wanting to be doing more, but not really knowing how to. There was definitely a shift, you know, in having to just think I can’t necessarily fix this issue. When I went into medicine, I was doing so because I just wanted to be able to care for people, and lots of medicine is actually caring for people and not necessarily curing or fixing them.

I attended one Schwartz round - these are sessions which are open to all staff members, and it’s all about discussing your experiences and talking about how you feel, but you’re not allowed to problem solve because one of the things that everyone, particularly doctors, wants to do all the time is problem solve, and actually, sometimes, the process of dealing with difficult situations can involve you just recognising the emotions that you have, and just accepting that that’s how you feel - I found it incredibly useful. I felt calmer and better, I think, from recognising that other people felt similarly, and recognising that there wasn’t always going to be an answer or a way of not feeling that way.

One of the things that I found really difficult was seeing people in hospital who were likely to pass away, and them not being able to be visited by their family. We had this policy, for infection control reasons, that only one family member could come, and there were certain time limits. I found that really, really, really hard - and just putting myself in that position and thinking, if it was my mum or my dad or my grandparents, what would I do if between me and my brother and sister, we could only choose one of us to say goodbye?

That was something that I found so challenging. I was working on a ward that had quite a lot of elderly patients who weren’t necessarily going to be sent to the intensive care unit. They were people that had potentially lots of other comorbidities and maybe were quite frail. That was something that I talked about with colleagues extensively in order to just be able to process that emotion.

Champa Jetha

Acute Therapy Technician Covid is so new that there was no set way of ‘this is how it’s going to be’. So it was about being a little bit flexible and trusting … and praying hard! The power of prayer is going to get you through this more than anything because the pandemic is not in your control - you have to just surrender to higher powers and have faith because if you’re second guessing everything and trying to understand, you won’t always get your head around things, which can lead you to be a little bit more anxious and stressed, which doesn’t help.

Personally, I enjoy working on different wards because I want the experience of different clinical settings. For some people it’s very unnerving and unsettling because they like to know their ward, and specialise in that, but I want to go on and do an Occupational Therapy degree and so the exposure is good.

OT is very varied and you can do so many different types of OT. My background is social care and I come from the direction of mental health, learning disabilities, and a variety of health conditions. I’ve come to get more clinical experience, because I don’t have that yet.

Danya Chandrakumar

Obstetrics and Gynaecology Registrar Thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic, I remember the fear of the unknown. It was a new disease, and nobody really knew the potential risks to our maternity patients. We were continually adapting to new protocols and guidelines to keep both our patients and ourselves safe, whilst trying to maintain our usual high standards of care. We were placed on an emergency rota, working longer hours with more frequent night shifts.

This was exhausting to say the least, but it was amazing to see how everyone rallied together.

With staff isolating with Covid symptoms themselves, others readily stepped in to cover and ensure the service kept running. The teamwork was remarkable, and everyone was willing to go that extra mile to help as much as they could.

As doctors, we often hide our emotions, staying strong for our patients in the most challenging situations. But the pandemic has perhaps been the most challenging time for generations - the isolation, the physical burden, the uncertainty. At times it was impossible to hide these feelings. But I think we all found that sharing these emotions with our colleagues, friends and family was much better then keeping them bottled up. I hope I have used these unprecedented times to become a better and more resilient doctor.

Alice Dewsnip Foundation Doctor

Anybody working in health care and medicine needs a balance. You need some detachment, but on the flip side, you can’t be a good healthcare worker if you don’t have the emotion and the empathy to understand your patients and have a good relationship with them.

But everybody is human and you will have days where you feel like you need to break down - days where you see your family member or friends in the patients that you’re treating, which gets too much, and then other days when you think, no I can cope with this, and you try and detach yourself a little bit so you can do the job that you have to do.

I graduated early from university in April, and I went from revising for my final exams to working on the front line in a hospital full of corona virus patients within a couple of weeks. At the very start, I was quite nervous about going onto the wards. I was not only new to the whole covid situation, but there were a lot of patients dying, something that I wasn’t used to and hadn’t come across really in my training. Having your name on the notes was a bit nerve racking. After you’ve spent a couple of weeks on the wards, you start gaining a bit of confidence. The team and all the doctors were really lovely, getting involved, trying to make me feel part of the team and welcome. This coincided with the situation getting better I guess - there were less patients, and less of them were dying day to day, and that was obviously a much nicer atmosphere and a much nicer time.

I live with three other docs in the same position as me. We often just chill together and kind of talk through our days which helps. One of us was working on the respiratory wards and was around a lot sicker patients. They saw a lot of their patients die throughout this corona virus time.

The thing that I found hardest was speaking to the families. None of them can come in and see their relatives. You have to have the conversation on the phone, either before they’re dying if it’s looking likely - do they want to, you know, come in and say one last goodbye - or after they’ve passed. To have that conversation is really hard. It brings it home and makes it feel more real because I guess it’s human nature to imagine yourself in that position. The situation in last few months is going to change us, but I think having been a part of it, in some ways, was quite good.

The thing that actually made it easiest to cope with is the sense of how everybody came together in the hospital. One of the nicest things was the BA lounge and the sanctuary that that created. Having a safe space and people to talk to, and just knowing that you can always go down there at any time, and that there’d always be a smile on their faces to welcome you in and offer you a drink or a snack, was really lovely. I think the morale among a lot of people was really, really good actually at times, despite what was going on.

Ana Sanchez

Therapy Assistant I learned from my grandmother that my heart is imprinted onto everything I touch. I’ve committed myself to working with people facing loss, life limiting circumstances, and death, a long time ago. And here, I’m part of a team dedicated to improving patient’s functional levels and preparing them to be discharged from hospital.

Instead of being in a place where I feel like my life can be under threat, of being consumed by the demands of dealing with the patients with very difficult diagnoses, or colleagues that are maybe reaching the point of burn out - I understand that I can be in an inner state of peace, of reassurance, of joy, of being here at service. This then brings me to a state of focus, of relaxation, of presence. What we need at this point is really presence, it’s this awareness that this is what I can do, and this is what I’m going to do - I’m going to do this with kindness, friendship and compassion, as well as with clarity and assertiveness.

Working with the covid-19 patients - I consider this a gift, an opportunity to use everything that I tried to learn and practice throughout my life: how to assist, how to support, how to teach a person who is in a deep state of suffering. And how to use this present opportunity as sometimes a life changing moment. So, how do you integrate this moment with your past history into a new knowledge of how to go on with your life, and how to go on with your relationships? What’s the purpose, your purpose? What motivates you? And what do you want to achieve?

Charlie Hole

Logistics

When I first joined, it was very intense. The first day that all of us got in we thought, what are we getting ourselves into? We’d go out to the wards and there were 10 or 15 covid patients in each, and everyone was kind of on edge because no one at that point knew much about it. It was all very new. There was a worry that the hospital would be overrun. They were searching for capacity a lot, and the situation felt quite brutal. But as the amount of cases died down and we got more used to the environment, it became a bit more serene, a bit more like a job.

Before, you’d spend a couple of weeks not seeing anybody at all because everyone’s staying in their house - you’re barely even going to the shop - and then you come in here and suddenly you’re getting into lifts with people, and you think, am I crazy?! But there was a feeling amongst all of us that were filling in for the people who’d left because they were vulnerable, that we were young and quite low risk. So we thought, well, we’ll probably get over it, and those people maybe not so, and that kind of that keeps you going.

We weren’t really using much PPE, we were just walking into the wards. You kind of ignore all the social distancing, because you can’t not - it’s all very narrow hallways and all the doctors and nurses are just crowding around each other. So you go from queueing up at Tesco with you not touching anybody at all, and then come in here and you’re suddenly packed into a hospital ward where everyone’s got covid and in some ways, it desensitises you to the fear because you’re engaging with it, you’re coming right up close, you’re having to confront it.

And that makes the problem very, very narrow, you know? If I’m sat at home watching the news, I’m worried about what’s happening in Vietnam and Japan, and I’m looking at the figures, and that cases are rising in Brazil, and I’m concerned about the whole world. And then I come in here, and it’s like, I’ve got to get this box of masks, to that ward, up these stairs - and so I’ll just do that! And that makes the problem small, you know, so in terms of anxiety, it was the best thing I could have done. Because otherwise I would’ve sat at home thinking about the news, and that’s not good place to be.

Like everyone, I’ve read so much about it. And what I’ve learned is that I’m not an epidemiologist. I didn’t even know what that word meant until about three months ago! And then you then you start to work out that the scientists don’t know, and that they are actually not following one train of thought - there’s 3 or 4 different angles that they come at it from: different perspectives, different scientific thought. So I don’t know, and I try not to pretend that I know too much about it.

But covid’s changed everything, and it will be interesting to see how many of those changes are long term and how many are short term. To what extent will we all go back to the tube and the pub and everything else? Every aspect of life has changed and there’s never been an event that’s actually affected everyone’s lives in this way before. You can’t escape it, so that’s kind of interesting. I’m of the opinion that everything will change and there’ll be an awful lot of good that will come out of it in the end.

I’ve never been so optimistic about humanity, which is such a strange thing to say and I feel kind of guilty about saying it but yeah, I don’t buy into the pessimism and fear.

Muhammad Khan Clinical Biochemistry

I have been coming to work all these days. We have to, because we are essential workers we have to provide blood tests.

Mainly, we’re testing blood. Initially we were quite scared that we might get Coronavirus, but recently we’ve started testing for antibodies and it’s come out that we’re all negative.

Because we didn’t get infected, that shows that this infection isn’t transmitted via blood.

Working in hospital is a risk, but the thing is we are not directly connected to the patient’s, we come straight to the lab, and that’s a very restricted area. Occasionally I ask doctors who come upstairs, and I think some of them have got the infection as well. This is stressful for everyone, and of course we could feel that within the hospital. The staff are doing a great job - they have been treating Covid patients, and they’re putting their lives at risk. I have admiration for those people, and generally everyone else here too.

I wish this crisis gets over soon. We’ve had enough of it. We want our normal life back.

Mukesh Tossar Porter

We know which wards are positive. The pager will say: patient, bed, ward, where he’s going and then there’s a dash, and it says covid positive, or covid possible.

We go there in our minds, thinking right, I’ve got to get this on, I’ve got to get that on. Got to get the mask on, the gloves, the apron, the gown, the goggles, the face shield, all that needs to be done. We are mentally prepared by the time we get there, and I think that was the main important thing. When we get there, they’re already expecting us.

The nurse makes sure that the PPE is all properly on because there are certain ropes which needs to be tied from the back and neck, and once that is completed we look at each other and say ok, and then we go in.

Depending on where they’re going, it could be MRI, ultrasound, CT scans, we might take them in the lift. That’s quite frightening. Once the covid person has been in the lift, there is another person who sanitises it even though the patient isn’t touching any part of the lift.

That is nice to see.

It was a very very busy time, a worrying time - will I catch it or not catch it? It was very very intense - thinking about my family all the time. It’s changed the way I think about family a lot, a lot, a lot. Previously, you know, it was just like, ok, my wife, son and daughter are going to work and I know roughly what time everybody’s going to come home, and you know sometimes I used to stop by after work for a pint. But it’s better to get home now, and make sure that everybody’s ok, then I feel relaxed.

I think of what my father always taught me, a long time ago. I’m Hindu, so I think of my Ram, Sita, Shanker, Krishna and Vishwakarma Dada, and I just say their names, sing their songs in my mind, and that gave me a strength. Every Hindu has a little temple in the house, and we light our diyas and incense sticks, and we join hands and we pray to guide us through today, and thank you for waking me up and giving me another day, guide us through today, and keep our house, and family, and friends, and relations safe.

Fatima Satur

Pre-registration Pharmacist I left the hospital just after it started, to go and work in a community pharmacy, and there was a lot of panic there. But then I was told that my rotation would be cut short, and I was needed here. When I returned, the numbers that had just been a few, here and there, were so much higher, and you could just feel the intensity in the air. It was just a scary time.

Not only because of the numbers of staff that were away sick - that board over there was almost full of names - but every morning, walking past it, you’d see the new names of all the staff members that were off sick - it was a long list of people on there.

On each Wednesday morning we’d have the department meeting, and hear the new numbers on the wards - there were a lot of people sick, and the numbers would shoot up. I had never experienced anything like that, and just coming out of university last year, this was the first time we’d had clinical exposure. So we hadn’t ever had to deal with death daily or anything like that. It was already a shock to the system, and then going through a pandemic was very shocking. Looking after myself was very difficult. I think I took a lot of bathroom breaks, where I’d just go and let it out, and then come back.

I was in the elderly wards, so I was seeing a lot of elderly people who could be your granddad, your mother or another close relative. The visiting restrictions were very hard to see. The visitors would come in to give something to the patients, but they can’t physically go up to the wards, so they come by the hatch in the wall of the pharmacy and give it to me. Or they’d bring in the patient’s medication, for example, and then they say ‘please, can I just see them’, but we couldn’t allow it. So they would say, ‘ok, can I write a letter and then you pass it on to them?’ It was very, very hard. There was one old man in particular, and he just wanted to see his wife. It was difficult. And that touched me particularly.

Shaun Ola Animashaun FSA

To save people’s life is a blessing, to save people’s life is important. If you save a person’s life now, someone else can save your life later. I just keep doing what I’m doing, because I know when it’s time, it’s time. All I need to do is to focus on what I’m doing and help people’s lives.

And that’s why I can go.

I’ve seen how people are running up and down to help people, the porters, the cleaners, nurses, all together, everyone, doctors - I see all the efforts that they’re making, I see that they’re really trying all their best and I’m going to help them.

I was in here during covid doing the deep cleaning. We would take a patient out who had covid, and we make sure the place is clean so that if they want to put anyone back in there they can, or we clean out the whole ward. It’s not easy. We thank god we’re here we’re alive and we thank our boss and everyone for everything they’ve done, they really help us.

It is time we help each other, because we are one, that’s what we have to think about.

Temitope Ajagunna Domestic FSA

I worked during covid in ITU. The feeling that I had there, I cannot just say how it is because it was so crazy then. It was so crazy I would just sometimes lose my brain, I didn’t know what I’m doing then. It’s one of the worst experiences in my life. I didn’t even know what was called covid 19 until it happened, but it is real, I’ve seen it, it’s true. Dying of covid is serious.

Follow the rules, pull on your mask, give 2 meters distance to each other.

One day they brought a man and they rushed him down to the ITU, his chest was just swelling up really big, and after not more than 5 minutes, the man just gave up, let his last breath go. There was nothing they could do, they tried, but there was nothing they could do to help. If you saw that man that day, you’d be crying. A lot of people were crying, but they couldn’t help him.

I’m not sure we can explain what we experienced then because it was just so crazy.

Sometimes we’ll be crying, you can have 6 or 7 patients dying a day. It was so crazy then.

I was panicked that I might catch this thing because I work here and when I get home my mind is always worried. So one day they told us to go and do the covid 19 test. I was panicking and I said no, I won’t do it! But at the end of the day, I went there and I did the test.

I went for the results upstairs - I was positive, and they said to me that’s good.

Sara Finkel

Staff Nurse, ITU There were times during the peak of covid when we were literally just keeping people alive 10 minutes at a time.

The nurse to patient ratio was much higher, up to 6. Usually, it’s 1 to 1, or if they’re not intubated 1 to 2. And here we’re like anywhere between 3 and 6 intubated patients per nurse. One day a consultant was saying, usually one of these patients would have been our sickest in the unit and would be looked after by a senior nurse. And here you have a junior nurse looking after 6 of them. They were just so sick.

We had a huge variation of ages. There was no specific pattern or what type of people or anything. There was no villain to the story. It just was anybody. Our youngest was maybe 30 years old. How can it be from such a young age - all the way up into the 80s, I think our oldest was.

These people, they haven’t done anything, they’ve lived their lives and then they happen to catch it. Who knows how they caught it, perhaps it was just passing someone on the street, or just in the bus, and then it’s literally killing them. We had a gentleman who actually was a bus driver, and he was one of our sickest. He’s recovered, thankfully, but he was one of the key workers. And because he’s playing his part to keep society going, he almost paid for it with his life - he would have been at home otherwise.

It’s just made me think about all the people that I appreciate in my life and the fact that we shouldn’t take every day for granted. If you could ask all these people in the ITU what they’d have liked to have done more of, nobody would say, just staying home, resting.

A lot of time when I’m at home, I’m like, have I missed something that’s going to cause a patient to deteriorate. It’s a little bit better in the past few weeks, but at the moment, I still have nightmares at least three times a week and I know I’m not the only one in there. We’ve had dreams about redoing the whole shift, or about patients almost having a cardiac arrest, and all that kind of thing. I think our brains are still trying to save them in any way possible, even though we did everything we can when we’re awake. When I’m asleep, my brain is still trying to fix things.

It’s like, somehow, someway, there must be something else that we can do to keep people going and help them recover.

A lot of people are still having the after effects. Especially now we actually have time to think and reflect back.

But we support each other through it. One of my colleagues told me, Sara you have to forgive yourself. There’s nothing that you could have done. You know, you did the best you could but you have to forgive yourself and not take it all in. As nurses we forget to love ourselves a lot of the time. I find, even from speaking to colleagues, it just sometimes takes somebody else to remind you that you’re giving and giving and giving all this care but you also need to give it to yourself as well, to keep yourself going, so that you can continue caring for other people.​

Tara Jopson

Acute Team Lead Occupational Therapist I think we’re about two months away from that really intense period, when the only thing that was in my brain was covid. To be honest, sometimes you didn’t want to go home. My team is amazing and everybody understood the experience whereas at home, I’d come back - and it’s very difficult to explain my day in relation to theirs, and you know, on some not so great days you’d go home and burst into tears, and that is an intense thing to take home. So I don’t really want to do that. A lot of the time, I would stay and end up talking to the team as a whole, just like chatting, and that’s a good way of coping.

I don’t think unless you were here in it, saw those experiences, stopped families at the front door from seeing their loved ones … you can empathise, everyone can empathise, but it’s another thing to have somebody say, yeah, I did that as well, because they just get it. And I think that’s a massive part with our team, as we’ve all had those experiences together, and have had time to reflect on those experiences.

I literally didn’t want my partner to go out because I was scared that he would get sick, because I had seen the impact. I saw a lot of young people - I think there’s this perception that it was all old people but it wasn’t, there were 30 year olds and 26 year olds and 22 year olds and younger people that were very sick, and some that passed. So I think that had a really big impact on driving what I was doing outside of work as well.

I kind of feel like work gets the best parts of me, because I, you know, I love my job. I love what I do! And I think I put all my energy into looking after people here. And then when I get home I’m like, where’s the glass of wine, where’s the bowl of crisps? Don’t talk to me for at least 30 minutes!

Yusuf Yousuf

Healthcare Support Worker I’d just started here, and 3 weeks in, I isolated with my family, just taking the advice of the government, as my son had a fever, cough, temperature. I was told if I would have started a week or so later, they would have told me to stay home, because people need to be training me.

You felt that you needed to be out there. You should be out there doing stuff and why are you home, but at the same time, what can you do? You have to be at home. This is the way of you helping out your hospital, and society in general. I’ve never had that experience before and I would never want to self isolate again. Being there, and everyone else being here, absolutely eats you up, I’m a workaholic. I live 5 minutes away, which is one of the aspects that made me so excited about going to work at the Whittington - it’s only five minutes from my house. Yes! I’ve got neighbours that used to come out clapping on Thursday 8pm and I used to feel, yeah, we’re clapping, fantastic! You guys should be clapping for the NHS, this is a great institution, this is what it’s here for. But I didn’t realise that being stuck in indoors for them, has done their heads in as much as it has for me. And I think it kind of hit me one day when I was coming home, going past my blocks of flats and seeing food parcels left outside people’s doors and houses. Seeing the invisible part.

That really hit home - there’s people hurting much more than you. Yes, there’s danger to the job in healthcare, but you’re working, you’re getting out there, you’re making experiences, you’re staying connected. And other people are losing livelihoods and finding it hard to feed their family and kids. When the clapping started, I was glad, I was proud, but it wasn’t something I felt comfortable in, but when I saw all the food parcels left for my neighbours, I felt I needed to get out there and clap more for them, then for me.

Lily Anne Rosen Nursing Associate

When I come to work I just listen to music. That lifts me up and I think ok, let me see how my day is going to be. I take it one step at a time. And when I play that music and I find I start dancing around, then my mood lightens up, and then when you say good morning to your patients, and they say, good morning, lovely to see you, your day lifts up. It doesn’t matter what occasion it is, it’s just the smile they put on their faces when they see you. They’ll say, it’s nice to see you, and I hope you’re coming back tomorrow.

You have good days and bad days. When you’ve had a stressful day, and you’re coming back the next day, you’ll say, oh my, I hope my day doesn’t become as stressful as yesterday and you reflect on what happens. And you take it as an example, as how you can make yourself better and improve.

I’ve become more cautious about everything around me. It’s like before we used to do certain things, and now we have to think, really twice about it, or if I do this, what’s going to happen?

What is it going to lead to? Both family and work wise, I try to make myself a much better person.

Sarah Lunn

Head of Clinical Health Psychology I have this clear memory of cycling home one evening, as it was becoming obvious which direction we were heading in, and the unavoidability of what was ahead. It was a very vivid moment, a realisation that everything’s going to change. There was a sense of, how can I do this, but then also, I’m going to find a way to do this. I was left with a feeling that I was going to be part of this, whether I liked it or not. I knew that all the structures, policies, procedures, and everything that defined how we did our jobs, were suddenly being thrown up in the air.

How can we adapt, how can we tailor things? I remember thinking, it’s not right to ask people with COPD to come in for their appointments with me - it felt so radical to suggest that we stop doing face to face, though of course with hindsight it looks so utterly obvious.

These last months it’s been incredible working with staff and teams, and supporting their ways through this. I’ve learned about people, learned about colleagues, learned about myself. When everything’s so extreme you have to turn inwards and really find what you have. And that teaches you so much because you wouldn’t normally have to dig down and find things, you know, but everyone was having to go through that process across the hospital, across the trust.

Therefore it’s a very transformative kind of experience. It was incredibly hard and stretched everybody. It’s been said that it’s partly about people jumping out of their boxes and being inventive, you know, throwing away our scripts and having to be totally creative - it’s shaking everything up.

That’s a thing that I will look back on and think wow, if we hadn’t been through that, I can guarantee we would be doing this now. In years to come I think we’ll be on new paths that we never would have even known were available or otherwise possible.

But something I don’t want to lose sight of is the range of experience, of pain and difficulty - it’s quite seductive to get caught up with the incredible things that have happened and the change that’s come from it, but I think it’s really important to say and to keep remembering that actually at the heart of all of this is just the most intense pain and grief and suffering, at so many levels.

It’s very hard to keep hold of that and keep it in mind, because it’s our human tendency to sort of say, yes, that was awful, ok move on. I think it’s really important to keep connected to the meaning of why this has been so hard, and all the different variants of that.

Grace Emafo

Midwife and Labour Ward Coordinator This was in March - there was no lockdown, there was no guidance, we didn’t know exactly what we were meant to do in terms of patients coming in. It’s not like now - now we know we have to wear marks and aprons for everybody, but at the time there was no strong guidance. I think that was when most of us contacted the illness, in March.

At the time we were still caring for patients as usual, and as ward coordinator I have to go from one room to the other. So I was visiting all rooms to see that things were okay and then I felt unwell, but I didn’t know what it was.

And moreover, I was afraid to actually think, oh my god, I’ve got covid, I’m going to die. So I was denying myself, actually believing that this is not covid. At the beginning, I had sore throat, I had temperature, then after a while I felt no, this is probably covid because I could no longer smell. I remember a doctor said to me Grace, you don’t look well. I know we’ve been advised to stay away from each other for 2 metres, but I’m staying away from you for 4 metres. That was when I actually realised that this is it.

For me it was terrible. It was lonely. I felt isolated because I live on my own. I could not do anything for myself, I could not even bath, I could not even cook. Friends left food for me, but I could not even go out to collect it.

Sometimes my family would call me but I could not even answer my phone for the first two weeks. I felt isolated. I was scared, had anxiety, the fear of death. At the time on the television, all I could hear is how many people were dying, and when I contacted the hospital and the covid line, all they wanted to know was if I’m breathing. Even though I had shortness of breath, they didn’t think it was serious enough. I was afraid that I might get worse, and there would be no one to ring them. I could not sleep because I couldn’t breathe, and was afraid of sleeping in case I could not wake up. So I was always there, sitting on my bed day and night.

After about 4 weeks, I thought I was healed and eager to come back to work because I was scared of being on my own at home alone, but after a week at work, I became terribly weak, and so I had to take another 3 weeks off again. Altogether, I was off for about 7 weeks.

I don’t feel angry, no, not at all. At the time in March there was no strong guidance regarding the precautions that we have to take, whether to wear masks or PPE for every patient. It’s a new illness that the government or the medical personnel were actually learning about. They were not sure exactly what to do, what to say. So it was nobody’s fault, it just happens.

I’m still scared but I’m a nurse as well as a midwife, and I feel happy that we are in a position to support patients, support women, and to reassure them at the most difficult and vulnerable time.

Amir Landeck Anaesthetist

We couldn’t foresee what was going to happen, and this has been like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’m pretty sure that we knew we were going to get through it. But the question was, and is, how many people will suffer and how many people will not actually make it through.

That includes a lot of health workers who put their lives on the line.

Apart from the clapping on the first days, I don’t think people can appreciate what most health workers, specifically the people in intensive care, went through. I’m not intensive care.

I went into intensive care to help during the worst time, but what they went through was exceptional.

The nurses specifically, they went through the most awful time. We all went in and we all helped but no one had to pull up as much as they did. And not just here, but in every hospital in London and the southeast, and later the Midlands. The intensive care nursing staff, and all intensivists, they had it the worst of all.

Initially, at the beginning, we had a lot of people complaining because they couldn’t shop everybody was running for toilet rolls and god knows what. But when they opened up the supermarkets specifically for NHS workers, I went there and I would always thank these people because they made a special effort. Not just them, but the bin men, the post workers and so many others who continued to work and were not recognised enough. So I made a point every time I saw them, to thank them for what they were doing. Because without them, we couldn’t have worked in the NHS either.

The porters, security guards, the cleaners - what would we have done without the cleaners?

Fantastic people.

Rebecca Youngman Clinical Lead Dietician

It felt like M*A*S*H. Actually, I said that to some of my colleagues, most of whom are too young to know what I’m talking about. But it often felt like a field hospital. There are little things that I will remember, that stay with me, that made me laugh. It obviously was a terrible time and so many people have been so badly affected, but there were the usual moments of lightness that we have, to get through the job.

One time I was on the ward round and Prof Montgomery was trying to give somebody 50 quid to go and buy drinks. I think it was the first NHS clap, he wanted to get drinks in for that evening. And I was the only one that would take the responsibility of a 50 pound note - he said, you’ll do it won’t you? I said no problem, me and my team will do that at lunchtime. And then we were halfway round and a patient crashed in one of the beds - you can’t just rush and deal with it, everyone has to put on the PPE first. And Prof just looked at me, delved in his pocket and got another 50 pounds out - he said, I think we’re going to be needing more!

I spent a lot of time talking to the relatives of the ITU patients in the first three weeks, phoning them up at the end of each working day to talk to them about how they’re feeling, and giving them updates. And I had to keep reminding them that, while for them, all the words are very scary and the decisions around intubation and stuff like that are so serious, actually it’s what doctors do every single day. It’s just a bigger, a bigger and more intense thing then what we always do. People do know what they’re doing. Most people have never seen anything like it before, but the treatment is the same.

Louise Hayes

Senior Sister Critical Care I find it very difficult to put it into words the emotions and the feelings of what it was like to be here. I actually think there aren’t really words to describe the experience because of the enormity of what happened. I always feel a little bit inept with words because if you haven’t experienced something, it’s very, very difficult to understand and empathise. If there’s a quiet moment, particularly on night shifts, you can stand in a corner of the unit remember how it was, and how many more people we had.

Team working was something you couldn’t have done this without - that’s something again that will stick with you as you remember this, obviously the patient side of things is the patient side of things, but that team requirement was amazing. We had a lot of people who came to support us, to support the patients.

Everything that happened, happened very, very quickly. There were a lot of patients who were coming in, in a much quicker space of time than normal - they were coming in one after another. We had to look after ourselves to one degree because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to come in and do what we did. A lot of it was about communicating and talking with people. It didn’t need to be a formal debrief, but having the ability to either vent, or just debrief how they felt during those 12 hours, whether that was in their own peer groups or in places like the canteen with Project Wingman.

Brenda Chick Neonatal Nurse

We work closely together here as a team, and it’s almost impossible to do social distancing because space is really tight - it’s such a small unit. We can have six babies at one time, so working and social distancing is difficult. For example, I need to check medications and I can’t do that on my own. Or if a parent needs to be shown something, like how to do an NG tube - we’ve done as much as possible to maintain social distance, but we always work together.

There’s no singleton here.

I’ve been working here for 8 years, and coming into work was good for me. I looked forward to it because I knew that I was doing something good, I was giving back to the community.

There’s a family feel here, and the matron of the team did as much as possible to make sure that his nurses were very well looked after.

We had a lot of help from from our student nurses. We were very well staffed because they came in to help us, but I’ve just heard that from July, the government won’t allow them to work or get paid. I just feel a little bit disappointed as it feels like they’ve given and done so much - they’ve gone out of their way to help and then they’re not appreciated, which sucks.

Yesterday I was having a really difficult day and my colleagues realised that I wasn’t okay.

Their support was very necessary, very welcome and very important to me.

Monsurat Adediran

Receptionist - Main Entrance People come to the hospital every day of the year, but it is a little bit quiet right now. Not really like when everything was normal.

I’m not panicking. Whether you panic or you don’t, what is going to be is going to be. If our time is up, it’s up - and if it’s not, it’s not.

I’m not scared. And in the hospital, they’ve equipped us with PPE, so we don’t need to fear.

We’re ready - all the time!

Mudussar Ahmad

Orthopaedic Consultant It’s been a very surreal experience. My lasting memory would be the first time I went on to ITU. I would describe it as like walking onto another planet, there’s people everywhere, covered from head to toe. The ITU, which is normally quite quiet at the Whittington, had 2 patients in each bay and it was just heaving. Literally, it was a very, very surreal environment.

We formed what’s called a proning team, that’s where you go and turn the patients over, normally every 16 hours. There are 6 people in the team, usually orthopaedic and general surgeons, urologists, physiotherapists, anaesthetists, registrars. Obviously, you’ve got tubes coming out everywhere, and you know, when you turn the patient over, you don’t want to pull a tube out. So you have to do lots of checks - it has to be very coordinated with good teamwork. Initially we were doing 4 patients in something like 3 hours, and then by the end, we were doing 9 or 10 patients in that same time. I would do that twice a day, sometimes even 3 times a day, depending on what was necessary.

As a medical professional you have a duty, and our duty is to do the best for our patients.

Obviously you’ll put yourself in harm’s way in order to do your duty. That’s a sacrifice that we are willing to make. If you are afraid of death then you may say, I’m not going to put myself in ITU at the forefront. There’s been a lot of medical professionals who’ve died as a result of catching covid, so you can’t say that’s an unreasonable thing to say.

Chinea Eziefula Clinical Psychologist

These lyrics from a Leonard Cohen song that a friend of mine once pointed out - there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. They’ve always stayed with me, especially during this period.

A lot of people in healthcare have this special drive to put themselves last, and everybody else first – it’s almost natural and in-built. I see that every day but I saw it even more during COVID, as colleagues did their best to give what they had in unusually harsh conditions. I saw it on the news, with the death tolls among healthcare staff, and I experienced it myself when pushing through and trying to help in some small way.

Our experiences of the pandemic, happened in an already very depleted system, and it’s ongoing. I’ve found this time personally challenging – especially witnessing people doing their best and sacrificing so much. Seeing that, I felt so many things, I heard about so many emotions that others felt too. Shock, surprise and shame were feelings that showed up for some of us too, in some way or another, I think because as healthcare clinicians, many of us are comfortable with that normal healthy concept of being in need – but more so when we’re positioned as ‘the helpers’. This pandemic has highlighted that helpers also need help. We always have and always will.

I think that a crisis like this can lead to meaningful change. Sometimes, through something like this, you can see more, learn more, appreciate more - things can become more beautiful.

I think that’s happened for me and for many of the teams and people around me. Important values have been highlighted in new and previously overlooked ways.

That lyric, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in ... it’s taken on new meaning for me.

Hussain Rampur

Chief Cardiac Physiologist (Echo Specialist) We go and scan the patients in ITU to see their heart function, especially related to their lungs. It’s an intense atmosphere, with all the beds full. We’re wearing the proper protocol PPE and we spend 30 to 45 minutes scanning a single patient. It is a disturbance to the mind - looking for life, when they’re struggling to come away from death.

They are standing at the door of death and we’re fighting to bring them back to life.

Sometimes I think it’s like they’re standing on a pole, trying to walk to the door of life. To the left, if they fall off, they’ll fall into thorns. To the right, they will fall into fire, and the team of the doctors, nurses and all the medical staff, are barricading the sides of the bridge so that they can’t go to the left or to the right. We are trying to help them slowly cross to the door of life.

You should be kind and generous to everybody in this world, with love, care and affection.

Today you are here, but tomorrow you don’t know - you don’t even know what is in next couple of hours. So be good with everyone, and show them your kindness, your generosity and your being human. All humanity has to be equal.

When I’m scanning a patient, I’m very close to them, you can’t stand three metres away. You have to be very close to their chest and their face, no wonder we are wearing PPE. But that’s not in my mind when I’m scanning the patient. When I finished my degree I took an oath, and we are the first people to stand for the patients, to serve, to sooth their sick bodies. We are prepared for this.

When you enter the ward, wearing all the PPE, everybody is struggling for someone’s life, to get that person from the door of the death. You see the teamwork and the dedication from all my colleagues, from the helpers to the doctors, and particular praise needs to go to the housekeeping people, they are the most important part, and I really appreciate them.

Dibasunga Nzuzi Housekeeper

When I’m cleaning or when I feed the patients, I sometimes think, that could be me. I would double check my mask and gloves, but it’s not too scary because I have all the PPE. I might be the first person to be with them when they die, and that makes me cry. And sometimes when I see people dying on the wards I get in the kitchen quick and close the door.

When getting ready in the morning to come here, I sometimes think, I want to push the time back and not get up now. Instead of it being 5am, I want it to be 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock and have more sleep, but what can I do, it’s time! This is my job and I don’t mind. I enjoy helping to make the ward safe for the patients, and doing things for them, like feeding them.

One day I was here, standing up, and I had to start leaning against the wall because I was feeling dizzy and then I remembered about a friend saying to sit down if I felt dizzy, so I sat down and someone from the ward came to help me. They said I’ll bring you a drink, what would you like, juice or tea? I was taking off my mask and everything, but I gave it a few minutes and then came back to work. I really appreciated that. This ward is like a family where we all look after each other. The sister, the doctors, the manager, the nurses, they are very good, they are very friendly.

Tin-Oi Lui (R)

Occupational Therapist I’m not from here, I’m from Hong Kong originally, but I studied in the states and in the UK. My family are all healthcare professionals. When I was young back in Hong Kong, we’d do volunteering with my mom who was a social worker, and that taught me that caring for people can make a big impact. Society can’t work without human connections or without us helping each other. The world’s not in a good place at the moment, and we need that connection and strength to move forwards.

I know that we are just doing our jobs, but at the same time it’s our duty to do them well, even though there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of difficulties like people dying every day.

Emotionally, at that time, the only thing in my head was to keep trying to move forwards and to try to take it each day at a time.

Seeing some covid patients recover is a big bonus for me. Seeing them go from lying in bed and needing 4 people to get them out if it, to now being able to stand up and go to the toilet by themselves, gives me energy. Them walking their first steps since coming to hospital three months ago gives me purpose. For them it means a lot to be just doing the little things. It gives them the strength and purpose to go on and live a long life.

John Sam

Biomedical Scientist In the Blood Science department you get to know how samples come in, in terms of the winter season, spring season, summer etc. In November, December it was like usual. Then, on the news, we saw that we had a case, and a few weeks down the line, it became just too much. It was almost everybody in the hospital, and you could see the people were coming through A&E. You can tell it’s covid.

We do lots of different tests, D-dimer is one of them. If somebody comes through A&E with chest pains, the D-dimer goes up, but not that great. We hardly get a thousand units. And with covid patients, you can get 10,000, or 20,000 or 25,000, and then you know that this is definitely something.

So we were a bit anxious, this is something new that we’ve not seen before. Of course, although we knew the virus cannot jump from the sample into the air, some of the tests, we have to pipette the sample, and so we wore PPE. Most of the patients in ITU, their profiles were way above what’s expected. We had a few cases, and then all of a sudden the numbers just went up.

It’s a novel virus and some of us were doing a lot of reading, just wanting to know what was going on. There wasn’t enough information out there though. Initially, you’re very very worried, asking yourself when will it happen to me, is that what is going to happen? But with time you get used to it.

Alexandra Cristina Radu Biomedical Scientist

I feel relief now that we can get tested, because before we had some antigen tests that you can do at home and they weren’t that good. But now we have the new method, and so we’re more secure and more confident of the diagnosis we give.

We’ve been so curious to see how many of us really got infected and how many of us didn’t, because some of us were expecting to have it. We had some covid like symptoms in the last few months, and everybody’s thinking, oh my god, did I have it or was I asymptomatic? I’m glad we can do that work now.

It’s been tiring - I mean, compared to other times. Less samples for other reasons and more covid. We had to be extremely careful with our PPE and everything. We are testing plasma here, and that’s apparently not as infectious as sputum, so we calmed down after learning that!

This is a tight community. I only started here last year, though I’ve been here training for 3 years in the lab. I feel part of this family now, which feels good. I feel like I belong here.

Charlotte Whiteley

Counselling Psychologist

I think there’s something about the bigness of this experience. It was frightening for a lot of people, and nobody really knew what was happening. Something about it felt really important and necessary for us as psychologists to be physically present at the hospital, to not leave people, our staff, on their own. We were sort of in the thick of it, but not in the thick of it - very much present, but not on the frontline.

None of us were wearing masks. No one really knew what we were doing, what was safe, what wasn’t safe. We were in a responsive or reactive mode to this massive emergency thing that was going on while no one really knew what it was. In all honestly we really didn’t know what we were doing to be to begin with, but I think we just wanted to be there. It felt very important just to be present and to muddle through and to see how we could be of use. There was a lot of panic our end, we did all these zoom meetings - and we were like: what do we need to do, what are we meant to be doing? No one really knew. But I think just having our presence as a psychology team, giving out leaflets, being on hand to talk to people meant that we were giving anyone that worked at the hospital permission to talk about this hideous experience, and how overwhelming and scary and frightening and uncertain it was.

I think that was quite a vital role - giving people permission to not be ok. That was kind of the strap line ‘it’s ok not to be ok’. I think humans have a tendency to think it’s not ok to feel frightened by their feelings, or to feel that they need to be a certain way, or be perceived in a certain way. There’s perhaps an expectation that because we work in the health profession, that we should all be ok, happy, grounded and sorted. But actually, it’s really important that we acknowledge difficult and painful feelings and thoughts, rather than hide away from them, because the hiding is what leads to the suffering.

We can’t hide something that’s an inevitable part of being a human - pain is inevitable. But the suffering, that’s the layer that we add. How we respond to it is what leads to the suffering. If we allowed ourselves just to be with pain, and to make space for it and to talk about it and to actually connect through pain, then we’d probably have a richer experience as humans. But we have a tendency to add these layers of suffering.

There was so much change, so much uncertainty and so much not knowing at the beginning, I found it incredibly overwhelming and it’s the sort of thing that’s so big that we could we could just go under, you know - it’s such a big thing that psychologically I think you can almost shut down from it. It was at the very beginning that I found it incredibly overwhelming, and then you know, I adapted to it and just wanted to be of use and service.

I think different things on different days. Some days I feel I’m more able to think about the future with a bit more hope and optimism, and some days the future feels very confusing and uncertain. But on the whole though I’m not pessimistic about the future, I feel that we will find a way through this somehow, whatever that looks like. It’s just gonna be a strange time.

Angelo Vizzini

Imaging and Radiography Since this all happened, I’ve been thinking a bit about how to change my life. I’ve started to do things differently, like learning to play the guitar. So I’ve been thinking about the big picture, and how to build something different than normal.

For example, doing this photo - usually I’m the person that’d run away from photos. Now, I want to challenge myself. I love travel, and if I have some time free, the first thing I’ll do is just travel. I don’t like to stay in the same place, and I want to develop some skills and start to work on myself.

Zehra Messenger GP

We’re all working together, supporting each other and looking out for, not only each other, but the patients as well. For example, if a patient who’s doing quite poorly is coming in, or he’s vulnerable, everybody’s working really quickly to shield and help them.

There have been some really sad stories. I’ve been qualified for 16 years and I never thought that I would see anything like this. I never thought that these kinds of decisions about prioritisation of healthcare would have to be made. And the fact that when those decisions were made, and we were feeling sad about it, we all supported each other from a moral point of view and said, well, actually, yes, I understand. I know your heartache. This is what it is.

That’s comforting.

It’s so hard to express, but I it’s changed the way I see people, the way I see disease. It’s changed me.

And I’m not even in ITU - I don’t know how those ITU doctors and nurses are coping. We only see what it’s like in A&E - and that’s changed me. So I don’t know how they are coping, and I think it just humbles you actually: life is so precious

Lullay Ibraham (L) X Ray, Radiology

We started here on the same day! We went to uni together, and then to the placement together. We were even at the same secondary school, so I’ve known Maryam for a very long time - we’ve even lived together. And we’ve been through the Covid experience together.

So this is my first job, but even the people that have been working for years haven’t experienced something like this. You could tell everyone was taking it a day at a time, or even hour by hour.

Unfortunately, some patients have passed away, which is very sad to see. There’s a routine that the patients go through: they’re always in A&E first, and then depending on their condition, they get to the ITU. So those who are critically ill we do, as they need a chest X ray at the very beginning, and so we see them when they’re admitted in.

And then the more they deteriorate, we see that as well. With a lot of patients, we’ve had that journey with them from the very moment that they came into the hospital, to where some patients that we knew have passed away.

That was heart breaking. But it’s always a thrill when you see the ones that wake up and are talking, and then quite a few of them have been discharged as well.

Maryam Bibi (R) X Ray, Radiology

The last couple of months, it’s been really overwhelming. It’s been absolutely crazy, but I’ve learned a lot. I didn’t expect all this to happen so quickly and so soon. But it’s been good.

I got through it all, because everyone here is in the same boat. They’re just really supportive, and if you need any help, they’re all there for you. And it’s not even just my department that are helping, it’s everyone: doctors, nurses, radiographers - everyone just works together collectively, as a team. You’re never alone.

Rachel Chin Physiotherapist

I’m still, in a way, unpacking it - unpacking this whole experience, I guess. I don’t really know how to describe it because I’m still trying to understand it. It’s definitely an ongoing process.

Some days are really hard, and then you have some really good days too.

I feel like my bad days are the days where you see a lot of different people, but treat the same thing. Sometimes you might see really traumatic things like someone passing away in front of you, or the medical team trying to save someone next to a patient you‘re treating. Sometimes it could just be the tubes, or the colour of phlegm, or x-rays. It’s very encompassing - it fills up.

This experience has definitely changed my perspective of life. I think it’s so small. You forget it’s so precious.

Going into ITU, you hear beeping sounds, you hear a lot of people running around, a lot of talking, you hear discussions about some patients, and then others. You go in, and you start treating somebody for their chest. You touch their chest to determine the treatment to give them, for example, providing chest physio to help get rid of any secretions in their lungs.

Once you’ve cleared it, you can see how much better they get from your treatment. It makes you happy because you’ve done something, even though when you walked in, it was a really bleak, and at times, depressing scene.

We are lucky enough to have colleagues, friends, and even groups sessions with psychologists to talk to about our experiences - we’ve all gone through this together. The clapping was great but it seems like such a temporary thing, and now that we’re onto a new phase it can feel like people have forgotten what kind of sacrifices and work we’ve all put in.

Penny Vourou Junior Doctor

It was all a bit of a blur really, looking back at it, and it’s hard to remember specific things. It was quite stressful at the time, but I don’t see that what any of us were doing was particularly extraordinary.

I think that everyone was making sacrifices in their own way - it’s really difficult for the people who are shielding, to be at home for three months solidly, and not leave their house.

That’s really hard. And so I don’t see what we were doing as being more difficult than what anyone else was doing. Everyone’s made their own sacrifices, and everyone will have a different story to tell about what went on in their household at this particular time.

Kathleen Conneally

Senior Practice Development Sister ITU I run a follow up clinic for patients when they leave the ITU here, and they do remember things even when they’re very, very heavily sedated. They remember snippets and distorted dreams - things which are actually based in reality. We always encourage nurses to talk to the patients. Even if they’re completely unconscious, we talk to them. We try and put photographs of them in their everyday lives, and their families, around the bed space. It’s difficult trying to communicate with somebody when you’re getting nothing back, but that’s part of what we do, and we carried on doing that.

We’re juggling a whole lot of fundamental life support systems because these patients can do absolutely nothing for themselves. It’s systems like breathing, blood pressure, heart rate, fluids in fluids out, whilst maintaining all the equipment that’s keeping the patient alive. So without all these pieces of equipment, the patient wouldn’t survive. And of course we do all the usual nursing things too.

Certainly when you work in critical care, you’re never going to have everybody survive. When we see patients that do really well, it’s so satisfying and you get so much out of it. Even if they don’t survive, if you can give somebody a good death, and you make sure that they’re comfortable and pain free, then that’s a reward in itself. But a massive part of our job is to make their daily experience better because it’s not a good existence in critical care, it’s not a pleasant experience. And if we can do that, that’s a success in itself for us and the patient.

I’ve been doing it a long time, and sometimes I think I’m as tough as old boots. And then sometimes I have a moment. We’ve had some really really difficult shifts and you think, oh, that patient didn’t survive or something like that, and that does still bring a tear to your eye, but on the whole the positives outweigh the negatives. I get a lot out of my job still. I mean, I’m 25 years, 30 years down the line, and still looking forward to going into work.

Marina Kotsa

Health Care Assistant I’ve been working these last three months in the hospital, all over the different wards. I was doing extra hours, so I could help cover for the staff who were sick, or worried about their lives or their health.

It was a stressful time at the beginning. We were so afraid to come to work. In some wards, such as the negative pressure rooms, you wear special gowns, special surgical caps, special gloves, and special masks - but then in others, all that you wear are simple surgical masks and gowns. We just had to wash our hands properly, every time we were getting in or out of the bay, or had any contact. And so it felt really scary that we didn’t always have the special PPE that we’d had previously.

We had our antibody blood tests this month, and most of us were negative. That shows that we didn’t always need the special PPE, and I feel so happy that nobody contracted Covid.

That means that we’re working together, and we have good practice. So now, we’re more relaxed. Now I’m happy, I’m less worried, and I’m less tired!

Yangchen Tharakhawa Junior Sister

At that time, I came every day to work, I never stayed home. My family worried for me. My son, who is 10 years old, sometimes he just holds my hand when they’re listening to the news. They ask, mommy why you need to go to work? I say, don’t worry. We’ve got full protection and everything, you don’t need to worry.

I lost my sense of smell but at that time, that was not included in the covid symptoms. I was wondering why I couldn’t smell and I was saying to all my doctors, I’ve no smell, and I’ve got pain here, but we didn’t know what it was, and those symptoms weren’t included then. There were no tests. And so I still came to work. I never took a day off.

When it was possible to get an antibody test, it was positive.

I might tell my children about these things when they’re grown up. Otherwise, I’m not going to talk about it in the future. It was so sad. Everybody was talking about covid, and your colleagues would say, last night we lost 4 people, 5 people. I was so scared at that time.

I’ve been here for 6 years and normally we don’t hear these things, but now all of a sudden people are saying last night, many people died in the ward that is just next door. Many people lost their lives and didn’t get a chance to see their loved ones. I don’t want to talk about these things in the future. It is sad. So sad.

Mark Rivers

Head of Recycling I like to help people, because that’s what I’m here for - to help. I run the recycling for the hospital, and so if anything in the hospital is broken, it’ll come to me, and I have to deal with it. I get on well with everybody, and everybody in the hospital knows me - because if you’ve got a problem, I’ll try to fix it and make you smile. All the staff is together. We help one another, you know, it’s nice.

Rosette Tchanda (R) Nursing Associate

How do I keep smiling? Although it is very challenging, helping people keeps me moving, and just being able to help people cope with the situation, even if I’m not coping myself, brings a smile to my face.

This weekend, I’m going to Netflix and chill. Also, I think I’m going to try to finish the book I’ve been reading. I’ve been reading it like for the past three months, but I’m going to start finishing it. Hopefully I’ll finish it. I think I can focus on my book now, because things are getting a bit better in the hospital. I’ve not been able to because I can’t just stop thinking about the situation - when your thoughts are not in the book, there is no point for you to read it.

Alisha Shahid

Pre-Registration Pharmacist Initially when I saw the first patient, I thought wow, this is something I’ve heard about on the news - back then it was in China - and now it’s come here.

Each day you know who is on the wards that you’re covering, their details, diagnosis and the plan of action.

At first it was 1 or 2 patients in the side rooms who were covid positive, but then slowly it built up to the entire bay, and then eventually it was just the whole ward. I felt really fearful for everyone.

That made me realise the intensity and how fast it’s spreading. Because we’re one team, you’d ask someone ‘how is it on your ward?’, so you’d see the rest of the wards, and it was quite scary as you saw it kind of coming towards you. Working in a hospital, you see death, but this was at a much increased rate. At the peak of covid, every day on our hand over sheets there’d be patients that, the next day or afternoon, you’d see that they’d passed away. That’s when it hit me.

Normally, when a loved one’s passing away, you can still spend time with them. But the way covid is, you can’t. How can you tell their loved ones that they can’t be with them in the moments that they’re sort of leaving them. I witnessed that on quite a few different occasions, and it was really tough to see. It got to me personally, because I just put myself in that position and thought how I would feel if I was being told that my dad for example, was maybe about to leave this world in the next few days, and that you can’t spend your last moments with him. That really got to me.

And this, being pre-registers, this was our first experience in hospital. Before, we were in uni - now it’s our first time working, and all of a sudden we’re seeing all of this. We were actually meant to sit our exam today to become qualified registered pharmacists, but a lot of changes have happened. We were having to study when we got back home, and then coming into the hospital - it was difficult: mentally, emotionally and physically.

One thing that impacts me a lot - I live in an extended family, I live with my grandmother. And that’s one fear that was always with me - taking it home. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knew that I would have got tested positive and passed anything onto her. She’s got a lot of other conditions and I just made sure that I took all the extra precautions that I could.

Connor Price Junior Doctor

This is my first job as a doctor. I don’t remember a time when I was scared, with the exception of maybe the first day that I was on the ward. I felt prepared from my time studying and did feel ready to do it, but before going into the hospital I’d been seeing all the deaths and statistics portrayed in the media which kind of take away the human element of medicine. As I’ve been working on the ward, I’ve got to know everyone and reminded myself that everyone catching this are people, and that the vast majority of them are doing fine, though obviously they’re very scared at the moment, just as I was when I got onto the ward.

When working with covid, it feels like there really isn’t much we can do. So I don’t think about those things. I’m more focused on getting to know everyone and just finding out their little day to day things, like trying to find out if they’re having a bad day.

Life and death is something that as doctors, we’re exposed to a lot more than other people.

And I feel most doctors will say that this is what we’re trying to stop - this is what we’re trying to treat, which is interesting. Some people in palliative care say that actually we shouldn’t be so scared of death, as everyone has to go through it at some point and it’s a natural thing. The palliative idea is that if we get ready for it, prepare for it to be pain free, then actually that’s a much nicer thing than keeping people alive when they’re going to have a bad time in intensive care. That was challenging during covid, because suddenly there were all these young people who we’d never thought about that in that sense, getting very, very unwell and having to go to intensive care.

Tracy Owusu-Yeboah Paediatric Staff Nurse

I’m a newly qualified nurse, and have been with the team for a few months. My team and managers are very supportive, but it was quite scary knowing I’d be treating patients with a disease that we knew nothing about.

There was a shift when my line manager, another staff and I were discussing how our families are going to be exposed and what we could be taking home with us - we all had a bit of a cry and realised how overwhelming this was going to be. For me, that was the moment when I realised that ok, this is big.

In the red zone, you’d probably see a lot of really sick patients, surrounded by lots of doctors and nurses, with them having heavy procedures, like being ventilated or CPAP. There’s a lot of beeping, and people rushing around in full on PPE. It was scary not knowing what I was taking home with me to my family and my little one.

The most effect it had was when my mom actually got sick with covid and was admitted here. I suppose that’s the most reality you’re gonna get. I brought her in, and I then had to leave. I felt it from a relative’s point of view and also from the nursing point of view. It was really difficult, you know, bringing her in here, leaving, and not being able to see her, not knowing what’s going on - as much as the doctors will call you and keep you posted, it’s just not a nice feeling - not knowing what’s happening.

I think I was trying to figure out whether she had caught it through me or other means, and that was hard because then the next thing I felt was, well, is my little one going to catch it? And is it my fault? And do I need to now step away? There was that decision - I’ve isolated, and I’m due to come back to work, but should I? At the end of the day, I was needed here. So I did what I had to do, in terms of isolation and looking after my mom, and came right back to the hospital. Thankfully, she’s ok now.

To be honest, I don’t know - I don’t know how I dealt with it. I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind because I felt that if I kept thinking about it, then I won’t be able to function. You just go into autopilot mode and just do what you have to do. But now looking back at it, I’m like, you know, that was a scary time.

The door to then is definitely closed because otherwise it’d bring up too much. There’s so much uncertainty now, and I don’t want to open it because this is not all done and dusted - we don’t know when it will be over. I’m just grateful that the worst of it so far has already happened. My feelings about it can just stay there. At least for now anyway.

Samer Saint-Geris Microbiology

Antibody testing is in its infancy - we only started testing our healthcare staff on Friday. I feel like I’m working for the people who are expecting the results, I’m thinking of their tension and stress. I could see it as 100 samples that just need to be processed, but instead I see it as 100 people that are worried and stressed.

It’s a great relief to know that these people are getting their results. What it means we don’t know, because a positive antibody result may not mean that you’re immune, but it helps us track how many people have been infected, especially in the hospital, and those providing care.

There was such a deluge of work from the first day last Friday, and we’ve processed over 1,700 samples since then. That’s teamwork, and everybody just unselfishly giving their time and making space to to help out.

Michelle Hitchman Receptionist - Imaging

Since the virus has happened, there’s been a lot of reduction in actually seeing the patients.

I do miss the interaction with them because we seem to get along immediately, connection straightaway - they’ll come back and say bye Michelle, but it’s a bit ghost town at the moment.

The staff, we’ve dealt with it brilliantly. And we’ve really kept each other up by making sure we’re still laughing and being happy at the desk. We’re very lucky, we’ve got a lovely bunch of staff here in imaging. I think we’re probably one of the best lot. I do. I really do, I think we’re brilliant!

When you’re in a team, your team is like your family, and you feel that missing person. You’re not hearing that laugh, them coming in or at home time, so you do get concerned and you bring it home with you. But thank god they’re all alright.

Renate Fromson Junior Doctor

I’m a bit bothered by the sort of frontline soldier war rhetoric that’s been going on. We’re healthcare professionals and we’ve been trained to work in difficult situations. Before Covid, lots of sad things happened and patients died and things were hard. I feel that the whole narrative built up around frontline and war zones is not necessarily reflective of the truth. We’re not volunteers who have signed up to march into battle, we’re people who’ve been trained, and who do a job that we’re paid for, that we enjoy doing, and we know that sometimes it’s sad and sometimes it’s happy, but we enjoy it, and that’s why we do it.

It feels like we are over the worst of Covid for now in the hospital - that we’re already in a new phase. I’ve been through a period of reflection, and was really well supported throughout the time. I’m lucky to have a good support system at work and at home and the clinical psychologists were brilliant - they ran sessions for us to talk through things together.

But then also, we’ve been in quite a close team the whole time - I’ve been working with the same doctors and the same nurses, and feel that we can talk to each other. I’m trying not to dwell on or relive the harder experiences for now, I think it’s more about using them to gain strength, and to be ready for the next steps and challenges that will come.

Emma Savie-Disu

Paediatric Hemoglobinopathy Clinical Nurse Specialist The pandemic came and very quickly everything changed. Lock down and redeployment happened, and daily death tolls became a norm.

Our paediatric service here has had a complete revamp. The ward I regularly work on had to close to make room for adult patients.

Moving the last few things out of our children’s ward was an emotional experience to say the least. Our ward was once so lively and it now looked like a ghost town.

Our haematology service had to move to Great Ormond Street Hospital, and initially I was by myself there. It was really nerve racking but with time I got to realise everyone was just as nervous as me - we were all just slowly accepting what was becoming our new normal.

I learnt a lot about myself during this time. I learnt how adaptable I am and how capable I am.

So with all the negatives of covid, and as sad as it was, some positives did come from it as well. At one point I was seeing my colleagues more than I was my family, due to the lockdown restrictions, however as the time went on, I started seeing them as my family. I think the Whitt and my Paeds team will always have a special place in my heart.

Ophelia Luong Neonatal Doctor

I got my first knitting kit maybe like a year ago, and it says a lot, but I haven’t had the chance, or the patience, to pick it up until now. It’s when you’re kind of forced to have downtime, that you have the patients to sit down and take something up. I found that quite therapeutic and that it takes your mind off things and, at least for me as a beginner, I had to really concentrate on what I’m doing. It’s quite satisfying once you get in the hang of it, it is quite rhythmic.

I like cute knitted hats - I’ve made a couple, though they’re probably a bit too big for the premature babies.

Amy Phelan

Paediatric Senior Staff Nurse During this, there’s been a lot of change - we’ve changed hospitals and merged 2 teams and so we’ve got to meet loads of different people. Though it’s all the same basis, we’ve got to learn different ways of doing things - and that’s been really lovely. It’s been a really good experience, and I’ve learned a lot from it as well.

One of the things that’s changed is how we deal with it, as we’re used to kind of plodding along, and we’d keep going in the very British ‘keep calm and carry on’ way. Now we’re learning to deal with it, support each other, acknowledge it and also recognise why we’re doing our job.

We do mental health talks and group team building now and it has been really lovely. It’s only a 5 - 10 minutes thing - bouncing off ideas, letting yourself know that everyone’s in the same boat, and that everyone’s dealing with the same things. It kind of gives you that anonymity to be like, ok, it’s not just me. It’s all just about support and leaning on each other as part of the team, which we’re quite good at.

These times are unique - it’s something that we will continue to learn from and use as a way of going forward and developing ourselves.

Jordan Ellis

1st Year Doctor I’m a first year doctor, and I think being junior almost helps because we didn’t have a defined normal, and so for us it was easy to adjust I think - though it was pretty horrific early on. It was quite sad on a daily basis.

I worked on this ward for two of three months before Coronavirus, and in that time period, we had maybe one or two patients who passed away and that was very difficult in itself, but in the Coronavirus pandemic you’re working across the hospital, and inevitably more people die on a more frequent basis, and it’s tough to deal with, without really knowing what is next.

It’s quite scary actually.

The unknown is the toughest bit I feel. Early on it was more disbelief. We didn’t really believe that what was happening, was happening. We were tuning into the news every night to find out what was happening next, and we’d come to work the next day and what they were saying on the news was implemented on the wards - so it was constantly changing, and things were getting worse. You can do all the modelling you like, but it’s difficult to know for sure which way this is going.

But at the moment it’s nice. Touch wood, we’re having a bit of respite and we’re getting back to normal medicine, though who knows what the future is going to hold.

Ganiyat Jolaosho Healthcare Assistant

What makes me happy is whenever the patient comes in, you give them proper treatment.

Sometimes they come back to say thank you. And sometimes they come back, and they give you chocolate as well!

Stefan Campbell Cardiac Physiologist

We don’t know how much risk we’re putting each other in, or the patients, or family back home as well. I live with my parents, who are obviously black, and they’ve got underlying health issues too. They’re 65, 66, so they’re getting into the vulnerable ages. It was a concern for me, because I knew I was a high risk of bringing things back home. That was my worst fear of the whole thing - it wasn’t really too much about myself, due to my age and stuff, but for my parents.

We were learning new things about the virus every day, and the more we know about the virus, the better it is to handle. You’ve just got to take every day at a time really. Every day is going to bring different challenges, and you’ve got to just come in and see what you can do to aid the hospital, or aid the clinic, or further the objectives we have.

I think you’ve just got to come in with the same attitude as before, which is to help people get better. The core of my job involves both diagnosing and caring. I think there’s definitely an element of both - using my knowledge and skills, and then the actual caring for patients as well. I think they both go hand in hand.

I think the Clapping for Carers allows me to see what the NHS has always been doing all along, even before the pandemic started. It allows you to appreciate what we’ve been doing for so long. It does feel good being a part of it. But nothing’s really changed.

Thomas Kostakos Registrar Orthopedics

Looking at the patients who were very, very ill with covid was shocking. The volume of people coming in and being that unwell, is not something you encounter very frequently in medicine, especially in my specialty. My patients tend to be healthier, sometimes with injuries or pain, but we don’t deal with life threatening problems very often. Seeing patients coming in at that rate with that amount of illness is really scary. We were actually all shocked by it, taken aback.

During these last few months, we’ve had to deal with an extraordinary amount of difficulties.

There was a lot of communication between hospitals, changes of opinions and the sharing of experience which I think was key in determining the battle plan.

In the end, I think it comes down to everybody pulling their weight but also realising that it’s difficult for many people, so you need to be understanding and compassionate. The people on the front line were at the risk of being overworked, having more duties, and being worse off when they come to work.

You have to care for your staff. I mean, that’s the reason I became a doctor, I like looking after people, and during that period, it felt like we were doing that. From our side, even though we’re not the first responders to a pulmonary virus, we did our best to help, and I think that our colleagues in the ITU and in the front line appreciated the help for what it was. But equally we had all the rest of the orthopaedic world to deal with, and the patients who were left at home in pain and unable to receive treatment because, obviously, more severe issues were going on -we managed to change our way of practice and make it so that these patients didn’t get left out as well.

Joy Jackson

FSA Housekeeping I remember one day coming to work and I was crying. I didn’t want to come because there was so much people just dying, dying, dying in my ward. But I knew I had to do it. Because you know, everybody can’t stay home. I had other workers that couldn’t make it because some scared, some sick, lots of different reasons. But there’s a thing in me, I had to do it.

I just said God cover me. I asked my family to pray for me. They did and they said come on Joy, lift your feet, and I came in and I tell you that day, it calmed down a bit, it wasn’t that bad that day. But before …

You know what hurts most of all is seeing the patients talking to their relatives. Video calling and next minute I leave on that shift or go for a break and come back, and that one is gone. It was heart breaking. I talk to the patients. They eat the food as well, because then I give them food and the next minute they die. I didn’t stop one day for that month. I worked every day without a day off.

I’m not going to stop, I tell myself. I’m not gonna stop until it reached like everybody dropping, then I would stop. That’s what I’d tell myself. I’m not going to stop until it’s really, really bad. So I kept coming coming coming coming coming, until the numbers gradually came down.

The people that I work with, like the nurses and the doctors, I lift my cap to them because I see some of them: marked faces, sore faces - they really put everything in it, they put their lives up for it. You know, they’re heroes. I lift my cap to them, and to everybody in the hospital.

My grown up kids were a bit scared but they said ‘Mum, I know you, you’re a strong person, you want to do it - go and do it’. I didn’t see them for two months and that hurt me more than anything else. It was more than two months before I could see them again.

To look after myself, I make tea with ginger, because my partner, he does deliveries for Sainsbury’s and so he goes out, and he bought for me. I make with ginger, with garlic and whatever, and we drink that every night.

Rizalyn Gonzales-David

Clinical Site Practitioner, Bed Manager Thank God, I have an hour’s drive to go home, as it takes me an hour to unwind at least. And when I get home, first because of the infection, I shower and by the time I come out, I try not to think about it all because I won’t be able to function as a mother otherwise. So I try not to hear about work when I’m at home - I try to leave everything that has anything to do with work, at work. And then, when I get in the car to go to work, I leave everything that’s at home, at home - so I can take on my nursing persona when I get to work.

Nursing is caring. But part of life is dying at the end. In this case, it’s a bigger quantity, we were seeing so many people who were quite unwell, in one go.

In the personal sense there will be a lot of fallout from this, I would say. There will be traumatised people, not just nurses, but relatives too because at the time we were quite strict. You can’t say goodbye to your loved ones, or only one person at a time, especially if you are in the shielding group that might catch an infection. It’s not normal, but this might be the new normal for a while.

We’ve just got to deal with it. Life has to go on.

Will McCaughran Junior Doctor

The last two, three months have been interesting. Different. Tough. Not very much happens, until everything happens at once.

Covid is a really horrible bug. I think there is something about being called to see someone where, despite all the training and the experience, you are utterly powerless to do anything.

Knowing that is tough, but I think you just carry on.

When we were in the middle of the peak, we never realised we were - we thought there was worse to come. We were thinking this is awful, what’s next week going to be like? But that time never came. And looking back, that was pretty awful, but because we were expecting it to get worse, we just got on with it.

And I think we’ve come out of this well, in that there’s been a very strong pulling together of the NHS, especially this hospital which is very well prepared. The people in charge here have done a very good job looking after their juniors and supporting them - we feel we are able to do it.

For example, the way they’ve always pulled the rota, so you’re always supported by senior colleagues. The abundance of resources, people to talk too, food - quite an important one actually. On call, when someone brings you a meal, that raises the moral hugely - and generally just the atmosphere of the place has been really positive.

I think this is far from over though. There probably will be a second wave, but we’ll see.

Sheryl Powell Imaging

You know, I’ve been very careful, I might only watch the news once a day. And at home we have a rule where we don’t watch the news from Thursday to Monday. We don’t watch it and we don’t talk about it in the house. I try not to overwhelm myself with it, and have the same continuous conversation all the time. I think I’ve kept on quite a level pegging with it all. And obviously, I talk about it with colleagues who are worried and empathise with them, but I try not to get too wrapped up in it because I don’t want it to take over my whole life at the moment, even though it’s what everybody’s talking about.

I don’t want it to control me because I still want to enjoy my life at the moment, I still want to try to have some normality and I think there isn’t any normality at the moment. But I’m quite like that anyway, I don’t allow things to get to me. I’m quite in control of things.

And I’m thinking quite far ahead - like my holiday next September. I’ve just had my 50th birthday last Friday. And next year, what I want to do is some more studying and try and do some things, like I want to do a parachute jump as well.

Wayne McCormack BA Cabin Crew

The airline industry has shut down pretty much. It’s a matter of taking each day as it comes, as we’re nowhere near out of the woods. The industry is on its knees and it’s traumatic, but going into the lounge and speaking about it and getting involved with other people helps.

Covid’s obviously at the back of my mind, but I’m not worried or apprehensive of it, no, not at all.

In aviation, it’s part and parcel of the job, regardless of what’s going on, to put everybody else first. Any extreme event could be taking place and you might not be particularly in the right frame of mind for it, but you’ve just got the park that, from a safety point of view as well as everything else. I probably only think about it on the tube home maybe, and on the sofa in the evening with a gin and tonic.

This all came about, because somebody thought one day, what if? I think it works because a lot of people are potentially feeling on their own and even lonely. They’ve a lot on their minds, particularly if they’ve had a difficult day. It’s about relating to each other and understanding that the person you’re talking to is also going through a really difficult situation. It just makes you feel like you’re not on your own perhaps.

I suppose it’s about a social network - about having a bit of human contact, and empathising with each other. In March and April it was a national emergency, well it still is, but it was a case of, we’re all in this situation together so we’ve got to get on with it, how can we do that?

The best way in the lounge was literally just making conversations with people and allowing them to talk about it if they want to as well. And quite often, answering their questions about flying, that was therapy for them.

Aisling O’Grady

Occupational Therapist I don’t think any of us have experienced challenges like this in our professional lives before.

You just deal with what’s in front of you and you just have to keep going - there was no other option, you just kept going with lots of adrenaline, lots of caffeine, and a lot of peer support as well. It’s incredibly difficult seeing people dying all around you.

You’re being placed under tremendous strain from a clinical point of view and also from an hours point of view - you’re just physically and mentally exhausted trying to deal with the emotions that come with that huge amount of death, and the restrictions around visitations, and having to turn family members away - it was really difficult. You always will have patients that pass away but not in the volumes that was happening.

You felt like every day you were just hearing of patients that you had been helping, and then they moved to another ward and then you hear from your colleagues that they passed away and it just felt very, very constant. It’s very easy to remember the deaths as they tend to stick in your head a little bit more.

It was quite traumatic for people and I think that now that a bit of time has passed, the trauma is coming out a little bit more. People are realising just how, at the time, you just do what needs to be done - you just plough on and get through it. But now with a bit of time to decompress and look back on it, people realise how physically and mentally exhausting it was and the amount of stress that people were under.

Though I think there’s definitely a positive side to it, I don’t only have negative memories.

It was an incredible learning and bonding experience as we tried to be as proactive as we could, and support each other as much as we could. The general community health care we provided external to the hospital was excellent too. We’re doing a lot of reflective practices, and I think people are trying to focus on ok, what can we do next time, to make it better than last time?

Abeera Mustafa

Lead Cardiac Physiologist The toughest aspect, I would say, was seeing patients that were significantly ill and them not being able to see their family members. We tried our best to try and make them feel a little bit better, just by talking to them and being there in the absence of their family members, and I thought we were able to give them some comfort. I would put my mum and dad in that position and think what it’d be like if they had no one, and we couldn’t visit them. The nurses and the doctors and all the health care professionals were there for them emotionally.

It’s hard work looking after yourself, being PPE’d up and on the wards and especially the ITU. It got quite uncomfortable at times, but at the end of the day we can take that off - we can go home to our families, we can put our feet up and relax and switch off. That helped me through it, thinking that we’re not here 24 hours, seven days a week - we can go home and pick up the following day.

But it’s been quite overwhelming, actually. It was surreal in the sense that we’ve never been through this before - and it’s difficult to get your head around. But just having the support of your team, and talking to others, has helped us to understand things a bit better and deal with them. My team has been amazing. We’ve been asked to do things that we wouldn’t normally do, and we’ve all had each other’s backs. They’re excellent and deserve recognition.

Barbara Casidsid Scrub Nurse - Theatre

My name is, Barbara, but everyone calls me Bambi. I work in theatre as a theatre nurse but we’ve been redeployed to other areas like ITU, looking after all covid patients. It’s really tough because when you were not trained to be doing this, this work is really difficult. We felt at first, it’s scary. As you’re doing it, you’re learning, and that’s good though.

I myself got ill, I got covid. On day 1 I had a cough, and then I started having no sense of taste, no sense of smell. Then I had a temperature and then I said oh my god, this is it. I started isolating, and it was so scary because I thought oh my god, am I going to die? I was thinking this for a week. I was thinking that it’s gonna get worse, and it was getting worse, worse, worse, worse.

I phoned 111 three times! One time was at two o’clock in the morning because I thought I was going to die, I was vomiting for three days and I was thinking, oh my god, no, I don’t want to die yet, it’s not my time yet! I don’t want it! The feeling is so horrible. You have to be brave - and everything you’ve learned, I applied it to myself. You really have to be brave here, in your heart, and emotionally and physically.

I had the swab on day 7 and it came up positive. On day 8, I was still having temperature [laughs], but then on day 9, day 10, slowly I was getting there. By day 17 or 18, I was thinking life is good and on day 20 I came back to work.

I’ve realised that with life, we don’t know - it could be just one click, and we go. We don’t know what is going to happen to us. This is my second life. I might as well use it to be happy, to eat properly, to exercise. So I did all of this. Before covid I was thinking work, work, work, work and now I’m taking my rest days, because like before, on my day off, I’d work doing extra shifts to have extra money and now I don’t think about it anymore. I want to have my life, and that’s it. I said, oh money is nothing, because when you end up your life like that, what are you going to do with the money? You can’t even travel - I can’t even go home to see my family, to see my parents. I have started to live day to day. I just get on with what’s happening today.

Wincey Andres

Intensive Care Nurse The amount of care we give to the patients prior to covid is really, really outstanding. And to go from up here, to down there, it was heart breaking. In intensive care we normally have 1 ICU nurse per 1 intubated patient, but when covid hits, we needed to look after 4 patients. Then sometimes even 6 intubated patients. On top of the those 6, 3 of them will be on the kidney machine, which was really really really hard.

There’s no exact words that could describe what happened inside there. It’s just full of tears - like we were saying after the shift, we really don’t know how we survived. People were crying and in tears. You see patients - well, we normally take care of them so properly, like, very humane. But during the covid times, there were just like dead bodies on the bed. Because you need to look after 4 of them and they’re all tubed and critically ill. How can you manage one when another one crashes? That is troubling. And at the start, there were no other pairs of hands. It’s just keeping them alive, to be honest with you. That’s not our proper care. And that’s why I felt somehow like a fraud.

At that time, people were calling us heroes. But I myself felt very devastated, and I felt like a fraud because I couldn’t really give my patients the proper care that they really need.

It was overwhelming. It changed me a lot, myself, really massively. I take things very seriously in ITU. I’m very detail orientated and we’re always on top of our game. But when covid hit the unit, everything just changed. It’s like a battlefield.

Sometimes you forget about the other people that were helping you. Some of the helpers that came to the unit were physios or speech language therapists or dentists. I can’t really forget this one instance, when one of my patients was really deteriorating - he’s really going to die in that shift. I had a helper with me, she was a speech and language therapist, and I was so focused with my patient and I forgot her and the other people around me. I forgot that they’d never witnessed death, at all. One of my colleagues told me, your helper was crying. Then it hit me - I’d forgotten: they hadn’t seen anything like this before and I was quite insensitive, because I was really focusing on the patient himself and forgot about her. I came to her and I told her, I’m very, very sorry for being so insensitive. I could only imagine the trauma that you witness seeing the patient dying. And I just gave her a hug. Then she said she’s ok, but I don’t think she’s going to be ok. I hope so. I hope she will be. But somehow I blame myself, if I’d prepared her somehow … but we were so busy, and there’s so many things that I need to do.

If I could talk to myself, I would say great job for doing what you’ve done. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You can only do what you can. When you go home, you’ve done your best, you can’t do anything anymore.

Ryan McGivern Domestic

Working here in PPE is quite daunting at first. When people with Covid started arriving on the ward, it was a strange feeling knowing that everything’s going to have to change, and that we’re going to have to get used to a new way of living. And when it got to the point where everyone in the ward had Covid, it was a case of trying to concentrate, and only focus on what you need to do. And that’s how I got through things.

Looking after your mental health is an ongoing thing. I do still feel under pressure and stressed out, but I try to not dwell upon it. That way I can concentrate on what I need to do.

It’s not only for my benefit, but for everybody else’s benefit as well, because everyone here is under a lot of pressure.

One of the things that our ward’s been trying to do over the past few weeks is to seek counselling from people who are qualified to help you. I’ve found their advice to be very helpful - I took it to heart, and it’s improved my mental well-being.

Thayanithy Rajakulasingham Senior Phlebotomist

Oh, we are a little bit stressed, but still, this is our first line of work you know, we have to do it somehow. We have to help the people as somebody has to be in front lines. If we say oh we’re scared, nobody would be here. This is our duty.

When I get home, oh my god, I have finished my work - I’m relaxed and relieved. It must be a joke, but my husband is already with the mop and bucket! He thinks sometimes I could bring something back to them, because my husband had 3 times a heart attack, even so he still lets me come to work, but he does take precautions for the home and the children. But that has to be done. If I was in his place, I’d do it too. At least he’s doing it - it’s less work for me! I’m straight to the bath, and then after, I can do anything!

Mumtaz Mooncey Paediatric Doctor

Throughout the whole thing, and just generally in life, I have a really big focus on positivity and of looking at the glass half full, as it were. I’ve introduced different initiatives to try and help people come together. In the beginning, when lots of companies were giving out free food, I contacted various people like Wasabi, and asked them to deliver food. Another time I set up a birthday cake rota. Obviously no one was having any celebrations, and so whenever it was someone’s birthday, another member of the team would bake a cake and bring it in and we would celebrate a little bit.

This rainbow painting was another way to spread positivity. It started off at about 4am or something, when we were having a break and chatting with the A&E nurses. Matron said she was more than happy for me to do it, and so I went to a random DIY shop in Holloway road. The manager was wonderful. He said of course! how many litres do you need - which I obviously didn’t know the answer to! A friend had his neighbours drop off paint outside his front door. I got a little team together and we decided to start really early in the morning before it got too busy.

In any environment, the mood or atmosphere is contagious. In these times, with the pandemic and so many crises going on - it’s all so uncertain, negative, or frightening even. If you solely focus on that, then that’s a dangerous headspace because it’s difficult to see any light at the end of the tunnel, or any way out of it. That can negatively impact people’s morale and well-being.

For me it’s about maintaining hope and trying to keep a positive mindset and outlook. If you can spark the match of positivity, then that does spread. People sometimes misconstrue positivity and think it’s about being happy all the time. I read this quote that basically said ‘being positive does not mean being happy all the time. It means accepting that even on hard days, there are better days to come.’ I think that’s really powerful.

With thanks to Sara Lunn Wincey Andres Abeera Mustafa Mumtaz Mooncey Tara Jopson Kathleen Conneally Katy Watson Ana Sobczak Suzanna Hardman Marlon Senga Andrew Sharratt Kate Milmo Lee Maddox Janne Gron