'It was vicious' - West Midlands NHS staff recall anxiety of Covid-19 pandemic five years on

On March 23, 2020, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced tough restrictions on people across the UK to stem the quickening spread of coronavirus.

But, by that time, hospitals were already under severe pressure as the number of people being admitted showing symptoms of the disease were far outstripping usual capacity.

Collette Iles, Associate Director of Nursing with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, has shared her recollections of how the pandemic hit the region half a decade ago.

At the time, Collette was the Matron of Critical Care at Heartlands and Good Hope Hospitals and witnessed first hand the impact it had on services and said lockdown was “absolutely the right thing to do” to ease the pressure.

Within days of the first patient being admitted, existing wards were full and temporary ones set up to try to cope were at capacity often within hours of them opening.

In ‘normal’ times, critical care nurses look after one patient at a time but they were having to cater for four at a time during Covid.

This had the knock on effect of leaving them with a “moral injury” of not being able to give the standard of care they wanted to give.

But Collette said one of her proudest recollections from the time is how the Trust and staff overcame their own concerns about the disease to look after both patients and each other.

She said: “I remember very very well our first patient. I was holding a senior sister charge nurse meeting and this was in late February.

“We had a session on doing PPE training around the equipment we would need in the event of a Covid patient coming to us.

“It was during that training I got a call to say we’ve got someone positive.

“There was a lot of anxiety around at the time about who was going to look after the patient so two of my senior sisters, bless them, volunteered to look after the patient.

“That was the beginning of it and very soon after that I remember it just started to ramp up exponentially. The growth was crazy.

“We ran out of our space very quickly. A colleague and I found ourselves setting up theatre space before we left for the evening. We’d come back the next morning and the theatre would be full of patients.

“The Trust were very responsive and redeployed staff to support us very quickly but you can imagine, back then, there was huge anxiety over whether we would all catch it.

“We were worried for our families and friends but we are much more aware of what coronavirus is now than we were back then and we’ve got a vaccine.”

She added: “But I’m very grateful for the team that was around. We all came together as a Trust.

“The two senior sisters took that leap of faith because there was a patient to look after. They were selfless because we didn’t know what was coming and what we’d eventually have.

“As nurses and medics and NHS staff we responded for each other as well as for the patients.”

While lockdown imposed restrictions for many, health workers were obviously unable to work from home and still had to face long hours in hospitals.

Collette said they still had their jobs to go to while people in other sectors were either furloughed or lost their jobs altogether as businesses closed.

But she said lockdown did have a positive impact with regards to pressures faced in hospitals.

She said: “Of course, lockdown helped because that exponential growth started to fall off.

“The next wave we saw was in September when we had come out of lockdown and we saw a growth locally as people returned to normal.

“It was absolutely the right thing to do, it was vicious. That lived experience is something you can never forget.

“I had colleagues who had vulnerable relatives who were locked in their own homes but it kept them safe. If we hadn’t done that then god only knows what would have happened.”

Collette said she pandemic helped her learn how teams would come together and work for the “betterment of all”.

She said: “This isn’t just critical care, we had people from dental nursing, theatres, we had operational staff, junior doctors – they came to support us and they came in their droves.

“The after effects of course is you can’t work in that environment under that significant pressure and have the moral injury that we saw.

“We want to give people in critical care the best care possible and the highest standards possible.

“But we coulnd’t do that when there was one critical care nurse looking after four patients as well as working with staff coming in to support us but who were not highly trained in critical care.”

She added: “Hopefully never again, but if something was to face us then we’d do what we do and come together.

“The pressures on the service day to day are impactful but the pandemic was something else.”