From the frontline: Louise Croft, Macmillan lung nurse specialist, redeployed to help look after COVID-19 patients
From the frontline: Louise Croft, Macmillan lung nurse specialist, redeployed to help look after COVID-19 patients
Louise Croft, left, pictured with colleague Laura Davis
From the front line: Louise Croft, Macmillan lung nurse specialist, redeployed to help look after COVID-19 patients
“My entire face would be sore every day because of the PPE – nothing felt comfortable. I’d be counting down the hours till each shift was over.
“Wearing PPE was hard, but I always thought that it must be hard for patients too – waking up in that environment with people dressed like that, not being able to see their faces or hear them properly. And then not seeing anyone without PPE on until they left the hospital. It must have been disturbing.
“The nurses that have never worked in ITU before did such a fantastic job, it was a challenging time for everyone so to come to such a busy and unfamiliar environment during such a difficult time must have been very hard. As an experienced ITU nurse who had also been redeployed it was important to me to help support these nurses.
“Not having any visitors in ITU was really strange. I can only begin to imagine how hard it was for the families. The video calls that we were able to facilitate were great but not without their challenges. Communicating face-to-face in PPE was difficult enough but trying to do this over a screen was so hard, hearing families sobbing, so desperate to comfort their relatives was just heartbreaking. You so desperately wanted to comfort them but nothing we could say could make it any better.
“I hated not being able to speak to patients’ families and relatives face-to-face. We would try using video calls so they could see their loved ones in ITU, but then they would get upset. How was I supposed to comfort someone over a video call, especially with a mask on?
“I’d also be worrying about my normal job. I’d go and see my manager during breaks to see if everything was okay. I could never switch off, I’d always been thinking about what needed to be done for both jobs. And, of course, we were all scared about catching Covid ourselves.
“The pandemic became all too real when we had a couple of nurses from another hospital in ITU with Covid. They worked together and all I could think was, ‘That could have been me or my colleagues.’ We didn’t know if they would survive, so many didn’t, but I was so relieved to find out that they did.”
