Many staff who were redeployed earlier in the pandemic are now moving back to their substantive posts as work to remobilise local health services. Here Gayle Cummings, Clinical Assessing Nurse with the Keep Well Team, shares her experiences of working in the Covid-19 assessment centre in Stirling which was set up at the very beginning of the pandemic to assess local people with symptoms of Covid-19.
Thankfully the Stirling Covid-19 assessment centre is no longer required due to the success of the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination programme and far fewer people becoming unwell and requiring hospital care.
Seems like forever ago now when we went to work there back in March 2020. The health board responded to the crisis by pulling together staff from wherever it could to set up the new concept of a Covid-19 assessment centre. It’s fair to say there was some trepidation, in fact I’ll be honest, it was a bit scary in those early days.
Gradually the staff who came quickly together knitted into a team – not surprising as at the beginning we were spending more time with each other than our own families! There were some tears and sadness especially when dealing with some seriously unwell patients but, on the whole, there were more laughs and we kept each other going with bad jokes and good cake. New policies and procedures were devised to help keep us and patients safe. The centre began to get its own unique vibe. What was once the scariest place to work became the best place to work.
Working together during the eye of a storm in a pandemic, head to toe in PPE, is a great leveller. There was none of the hierarchy that sometimes happens in healthcare. Doctors made the tea, managers donned pinnies and clinically cleaned alongside us. We had the chance to chat and pick the brains of medics in a way that just doesn’t happen normally.
So the expected 6-8 weeks there became three months, then spring morphed into summer, and another lockdown, rising Covid-19 cases kept us there as Autumn 2020 approached. Winter and Christmas came and went. January 2021 was the start of the vaccine programme and we then knew our centre days were numbered. The success of the vaccine roll out has been amazing.
The Stirling centre has served its purpose, it has protected GP practices from having high Covid-19 risk patients, assessed patients who needed to be admitted to hospital so wards knew what protection to put in place before a patient arrived, and it’s put many a worried patient’s mind at rest as well as provided many more with advice, treatment and support.
As I come hurtling through the twilight years of my career, I can honestly say this has been one of the most memorable in almost 40 years. I couldn’t talk about the centre and not mention the glue that’s kept us together, ran a tight ship and well-oiled machine and that tour de force that is Maureen Walsh, I will definitely miss that laugh… and roar ! 😊 Shout out too, to the unit domestic who’s decorated the tea room for Easter, Summer, Halloween, Christmas and then Easter again. Always leaving chocolate, biscuits and crisps presents. Thanks Grace, you wonderful woman you! X
2020/21 has been a helluva journey, I’ll remember the rainbows, the clapping, the goodie bag donations from local businesses. The smell of Acticlor, the sheer joy of finding a set of scrubs that actually matched and fitted. Watching the wee oyster catcher family nesting at the back of the hospital building, their chicks learning to fly who’ve returned again this year.
Getting to properly know my lovely Keep Well colleagues as previously we mostly worked on our own. And to everyone who hasn’t had such a good year through illness or loss, I’m sorry, I know the last year will be memorable for you for all the wrong reasons. Much love.
It’s the end of an era… Goodbye Stirling Covid-19 Assessment Centre …over and out.
