“ It was vicious '' – The staff of West Midlands NHS remembers the anxiety of the pandemic of Covid -19 five years later

On March 23, 2020, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced difficult restrictions on people through the United Kingdom to stem the accelerated propagation of the coronavirus.

But, at that time, hospitals were already under high pressure because the number of admitted people showing symptoms of the disease far exceeded the usual capacity.

Collette Iles, associate director of nursing at university hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, shared its memories of the way the pandemic struck the region half a decade ago.

At the time, Collette was the matron of intensive care at the Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals and witnessed the impact he had on the services and said that the lock was absolutely the right thing to do to mitigate the pressure.

A few days after the admission of the first patient, the existing services were complete and temporary put in place to try to face were often in the hours following the opening.

In normal times, intensive care nurses take care of a patient at a time, but they had to answer four at the time of the coco

This had the effect of leaving them with a moral injury not to be able to give the level of care they wanted to give.

But Collette said that one of his most proud memories of the time is how confidence and staff overcome their own concerns about the disease to take care of the two patients and others.

She said: I remember very well from our first patient. I was holding a senior sister nurse meeting and it was at the end of February.

We had a session on the training of PPE around the equipment we would need in the event of a covid patient who came to us.

It was during this training that I received a call to say that we have someone positive.

There was a lot of anxiety at the time to find out who was going to take care of the patient, so two of my senior sisters, bless them, volunteered to take care of the patient.

It was the beginning and very shortly after, I remember that he just started to increase exponentially. The growth was crazy.

We lacked our space very quickly. A colleague and I found it to install a theater space before leaving for the evening. Wednesday the next morning and the theater would be full of patients.

Confidence was very reactive and redeployed to support us very quickly, but you can imagine, at the time, there was a huge anxiety as to whether we attract it all.

We were worried about our families and friends, but we are much more aware of what the coronavirus is now that we were not at the time and we obtained a vaccine.

She added: But I am very grateful for the team that was there. We all gathered as a confidence.

The two senior sisters took this jump because there was a patient to take care of. They were altruistic because we did not know what was going to happen and what Wed finally.

As an infirmarian and doctors and NHS staff, we answered each other as well as for patients.

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

Collette said they always had their work to go while the inhabitants of other sectors were either on leave or lost their jobs while companies closed.

But she said that Lockdown had a positive impact on pressures faced in hospitals.

She said: Of course, locking has helped because this exponential growth has started to fall.

The next wave we saw was in September when we came out of locking and we saw growth locally when people returned to normal.

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

I had colleagues who had vulnerable parents who were locked in their own house, but that kept them safe. If we had not done this, God only knows what would have happened.

Collette said that she pandemic helped her learn how the teams would meet and work for the improvement of all.

She said: It is not only intensive care, we had people of dental nursing, theaters, we had operational staff, junior doctors that they came to support us and they came en masse.

The consequences are of course that you cannot work in this environment under this significant pressure and have the moral injury we have seen.

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

But we do this when there was a nurse in intensive care who took care of four patients as well as working with the staff who support us but who were not highly trained in intensive care.

She added: I hope never again, but if something had to face us, then we do what we do and we bring together.

Pressures on daily service have an impact, but the pandemic was something else.