Simon is a trainee orthopedic surgeon, currently working at @nhsnightingalelondon. Before the covid-19 pandemic, he was focussed on his Ph.D. in Medical Education, looking at how surgeons think about operative competency. His Ph.D. was abruptly paused on 30 January following his first meeting about the virus in his role as Vice-Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Trainee Doctors’ Group. He switched his focus to support the crisis facing the nation. Simon talks of how humbling it is to work with so many dedicated and passionate people, in a just culture. He says, 'There isn’t a single individual there who hasn’t inspired me. Being a small part of such an amazing organisation is something I will take with me forever, on my journey as a surgeon, an education Ph.D., an advocate for culture change, and as a part of the UK’s glorious NHS'. At the London Nightingale Hospital, he is part of the Education and Learning Team in a wide-ranging role that includes acting as faculty, representing and advocating for trainee doctors, and helping build systems and frameworks for inter-professional development and learning to provide the best possible support for both patients and staff.
Rachael is a paediatric nurse, who qualified at Great Ormond Street in 2013. Since then she has become a Specialist Nurse looking after children and young people with Type 1 Diabetes. She cares for and supports over one hundred families, living with diabetes in Salford, Manchester, and beyond. Rachael is a Type 1 Diabetic herself and understands the difficulties Covid-19 can present but makes her patients feel reassured, helping them manage their diabetes and live a healthy, normal life. Usually out in the community offering support to school staff and reviewing children in their own homes, Rachael has had to adapt her normal working conditions to try and prevent patients from having to be admitted to hospital. Determined not to let Covid-19 prevent her from supporting children with diabetes, or from safeguarding the most vulnerable children, she is primarily communicating via countless video and phone calls to support her patients and colleagues in the A&E department. This means that children living with Type 1 Diabetes in Salford are safe, well, and most importantly, at home with their families.
Ellen is a twin, a sister, a daughter and an auntie and godmother and an NHS healthcare assistant at Brighton Sussex University Hospital. Ellen has worked there for over six years in the Acute Respiratory unit and on the Cardiac ITU before the Covid-19 epidemic took over. On the outbreak of the virus, her Cardiac ITU was quickly adapted to receive and support Covid-19 positive patients. Through joining forces with the staff of other ITU environments who bring varying skills and backgrounds including doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals they collaborate to provide the highest quality of care to the patients they receive. Her team supports one another during this uncertain time whether it be personal or professional. Ellen loves her team as they are a strong unit and committed to caring for post-cardiac surgical patients. The whole team feels overwhelmed with the generosity of donations they have been receiving and want to express their gratitude to all involved. They know everyone is playing a part in trying to protect themselves and others, so a big thank you from Ellen to all of you too!
Verona is a Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. Verona is a sister, daughter, cousin, niece, auntie, and friend. She feels deeply grateful each day for her friends and to her colleagues who have worked together to care for patients during this pandemic. She is upset that COVID-19 is such an atrocious virus and is saddened by the sickness and suffering and to the pressures that it has put the NHS under. However she is really pleased that as a team in Trauma and Orthopaedics, they have really pulled together to continue delivering excellent care for their patients and their relatives; for example, those with fractures and other injuries. This moment in time has hopefully helped us all to focus on what is really important in our lives. It's so significant to Verona that we must continue to collaborate and look out for one another particularly when many of us and our families have also been personally affected by this pandemic. Verona feels completely blessed by the inspiring creativity of #portraitsfornhsheroes project and describes the artists as creative creatures who are sustaining and blessing frontline NHS staff with their inspiring talents!
Vimal is a Plastic Surgery registrar, based in London. He is a fully qualified doctor, on the road to being a Plastic Surgery Consultant. Outside of the NHS, he has two daughters who keep him very busy. Vimal volunteered to help wherever needed during the COVID crisis. He was asked to help out on an Intensive Care Unit at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. Vimal finished a tiring week on Plastic Surgery on a Monday morning and started his COVID cover on Thursday night in Intensive Care. It was hugely challenging to start in a new environment, treating a new disease, and on ICU, only seeing the most unwell people. Vimal thinks most of the frontline NHS workers cringe when the word 'hero' is used, but the palpable support from all around was encouraging. Vimal found that the PPE which protected him also dehumanised him. Patients who were being weaned off ventilators, who had levels of consciousness, were scared. Scared about what had happened, about what was happening, and of all the PPE walking around them. Vimal took to attaching a full-frontal photograph of himself on his face shield so his patients knew what his face looked like under all the PPE. Vimal is back now to his normal NHS Plastic Surgery role and wants to thank everyone for being so good with the lockdown and to reassure them that the NHS has a buffer if more people become unwell.
Katie works for the NHS within public health as a school nurse, helping children and young people with physical, emotional, and social issues. She really loves her job. It’s very holistic as she looks at everything that is going on in that child’s life that would impact their health. Katie's background is in adult nursing so when she was asked to return to the wards to help during COVID-19 she was really glad to do it. Working shifts nursing elderly patients on a rehabilitation unit, some with COVID-19 meant a complete change in her day to day work. While she missed her usual job and team, she felt really lucky to be able to provide care for these elderly patients and use her skills where they were most needed at the time. Katie herself has recovered from COVID-19. Katie feels really proud to be a nurse and to work in the NHS. However, she feels that the government has failed to protect the NHS staff and its patients from the impact of COVID-19. She gets angry at government hypocrisy about valuing key workers when it has literally spent the last decade subjecting the NHS and social care to the most damaging cuts, restructuring, and privatisation. The NHS is not a charity, it’s an underfunded public service and the government has it within their power to fund it properly. This pandemic has highlighted to all of us the best and the worst aspects of society, and Katie really hopes we can hold on to more of the good when it’s finally over.
Bronwyn Middleton is a consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester where she has worked for seven years. Bronwyn leads on ambulatory gynaecology and minimal access surgery and is also an undergraduate tutor for the trust. Born in South Africa, she also studied medicine there before completing her specialisation in the UK through the Wessex Deanery when an anticipated gap year went wrong. She is married to one of the many David’s and has a sassy 10-year-old daughter, Maia, who brings joy and laughter every day.
Following the initial surge of activity planning for COVID-19 in her department, things have calmed down, and, as always in the NHS, coping strategies and new efficiencies have emerged. Bronwyn is constantly filled with pride at how her teams rise to a challenge and cope in times of crisis through teamwork and doing what they do best, caring. Not even COVID-19 can switch maternity off and for them, it’s business as usual. Bronwyn found the public gratitude for what they do incredible and this was personalised for her through the overwhelming support she received when her bicycle was stolen from the hospital recently. The one thing she misses is performing benign gynaecological surgery and cannot wait to pick up her tools again when this resumes, even with the comforting discomfort of PPE.
Chloe Taylor who has just graduated from the University of Hertfordshire, with a degree in Paramedic Science and has recently started working for the London Ambulance Service. Whilst at uni, Chloe undertook frontline placements with the London Ambulance Service in NW London. During these placements, she was able to put the skills and knowledge that she had learnt in the classroom into practice.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in March, Chloe was out on placement and was truly working on the frontline. At the time, the ambulance service was taking over 8,000 999 calls a day (the average is 4,500-5,000) with many genuinely sick people waiting hours for an ambulance. This meant the crews were often going from patient to patient without breaks. Throughout the outbreak, they were seeing far more patients who were seriously unwell, pushing everyone to new limits. Chloe finds the most challenging thing to do is being able to reassure someone when all they can see is two eyes peeping over a mask.
However, the support that people have shown for the NHS and the emergency services over the past few months has been overwhelming. She cares deeply for her patients and is passionate about what she does. When the world has returned to normal, she looks forward to waving at everyone again as she speeds through the streets of London, now proudly wearing the green epaulettes of a paramedic, rather than the blue student ones shown here.
Kate Moore is a Practice Nurse at The Marisco Medical Practice in Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. She is the subject of my tenth #portraitsfornhsheroes painting for the Tom Croft artist project.
Kate started nursing in the late 1970s as a pre-nursing student as was the tradition at the time when qualifying to be a nurse. She told me that she feels so fortunate to have worked with many incredible and dedicated nurses over the years and the Covid-19 pandemic brought out not only all the skills taught along the way but also an abundance of comradery.
Kate has been amazed by the generosity of donations by a local sewing group called the Lincolnshire Scrubbers who have made some amazing scrubs, hats, and wash bags for so many NHS workers in the area. Many are made from very unconventional pattern material including the hat she is wearing in the painting, which she says 'I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw it and wear with pride. They also made us all button crochet bands to attach to the masks which are remarkable in preventing sore ears. Without a doubt, Covid-19 has been devastating and challenging but it has brought people's community spirit back to life.'
When Kate saw her painting for the first time she said she was lost for words and it took a while to process seeing herself as an oil painting. She was totally overwhelmed and in awe. It brought tears to her eyes as all she wanted was to show her late mum who would have been so proud to see it.
Dr. Anna Starling is a paediatric doctor who is just finishing her eight-year paediatric specialty training and was working in children’s A&E at the start of the pandemic. Due to her previous ITU experience, she volunteered to be redeployed to paediatric ITU at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington in London @imperialnhs which during the surge of the pandemic treated adults needing intensive care, rather than children.
Anna says she was proud to work with such a great team; together they adjusted to treating adults for the first time in nearly a decade (or much longer for some), the hot and painful masks, and the stress and sadness of the situation. She now tries to remember good moments like watching the sunrise over the London skyline from the seventh floor and hearing news of people after their discharge home.
Back in children’s A&E, Anna now has to find new ways to communicate with children through her mask. She’s still smiling but sometimes it’s not so visible. Smiles and extraordinary efforts sometimes feel like the backbone of the National Health Service, where the last decade of Anna’s career as a doctor has also been the decade of austerity and cuts to healthcare, children’s services, and social care; the effects of which are now becoming more obvious as the country tries to adjust to a new normal. Something needs to change as the smiles won’t always be enough.
Helen Donaldson is a senior Biomedical Scientist working in the Blood Transfusion Laboratory at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
When Covid-19 began, Helen's workload disappeared when all elective surgery was cancelled and because people couldn’t go outside the trauma workload fell dramatically. Despite this, she still had to go to work, people still got ill and people with Covid-19 needed trial blood products. Even though she is not frontline she is handling Covid-19 samples and just being in the hospital itself is high risk. She said that working during the first Covid-19 peak was scary but this feeling has settled now as it has been nearly a year and Covid-19 has become the new normal.
Initially, Helen said it was hard not to feel bitter and stressed about being exposed continually. Her department didn’t have to wear masks during the early part of the pandemic and some of her colleagues became unwell with Covid-19 resulting in two of her portering colleagues tragically dying. She has felt the constant pressure that she might become ill herself and has had to have repeat tests which are not pleasant. Thankfully, she still has not had Covid-19!
This second wave has made her realise how lucky she is. The wards are full and the front line staff are at breaking point. She is full of awe and admiration for the work they are continuing to do and would like to dedicate this painting to them.
This is my twelfth and final painting of #portraitsfornhsheroes for the @tomcroftartist project. This is Carolyn Hargreaves, a Clinical Research Nurse in Oncology (Cancer) at Kent and Canterbury Hospital which is part of @ekhuft. Clinical Research in Oncology is vital for finding new treatments and improving patient care and as a Research Nurse, she plays a key role as a patient advocate, ensuring patient's safety and protection and that patients are well supported throughout the research study.
With a decrease in workload, Carolyn was seconded to work on the Covid-19 recovery trial, recruiting patients to the study. It was a very strange working environment. Stressful, upsetting, and very emotional for both patients and staff. She explains how wearing PPE was very uncomfortable, 'It’s hot, impersonal, and a barrier to communicating efficiently because you are trying to be empathetic and yet not able to be tactile in some very distressing situations’.
During this second wave, she has been redeployed again to the recovery trial. Compared to the first wave, there seems to be more patients, symptoms are more varied and are lasting longer, the age range is vast and it appears that literally, anyone is susceptible, but more patients are recovering, it’s just a very long process. The current treatment for Covid-19 patients requiring oxygen has changed due to the early results that came from the recovery study last summer, which just proves how important research is. The recovery trial continues with different arms of potential treatments, striving to reach the best care possible for these very sick patients.