‘It’s getting tiring not knowing when this is going to end’

We haven’t had any deaths within our staff but everyone knows each other here and it would be a huge shock and affect us all greatly. The communication in our hospital is fairly good and I feel we are being looked after – every week there’s a formal offer of psychological and emotional support sessions for nursing staff and others.

That said, I personally maintain a healthy emotional distance from our patients, which with years of critical and emergency care experience, I’m afraid comes quite naturally. It’s the concerns for our families that truly brings it home.

The type of gowns and other PPE we’re using changes on a frequent basis depending on what stock they can get hold of, so we’re constantly having to mix and match our PPE to be appropriately safeguarded. We’ve not been without it, yet, but I’m not holding my breath!

All the talk in the media about PPE being washed has, I hope, frightened the government and provided enough criticism to prevent it from actually happening, as this would be dreadful.

There’s also criticism of the government putting so much effort into getting PPE from abroad, and yet there’s small companies in Britain that have been offering to make PPE to which the government haven’t even responded, which is very frustrating to hear. Wouldn’t this also help to support our economy in some small way, in our hour of need?  

We are all now being rotated on to nights, as perfusionists we now need to be on the floor 24/7 in and around the ICU, so this week has been very tiring.