Surgery staff answered ‘call to arms’ in face of pandemic
GPS AND PRACTICE NURSES ADAPTED TO DRAMATIC OVERNIGHT CHANGE
A NOTTINGHAM GP and practice nurse have described the “overnight change” the NHS had to adapt to during their “toughest ever year” when the coronavirus pandemic’s first lockdown took place.
Health staff watched alongside the nation in March as Boris Johnson ordered everyone to stay in their to homes to “protect the NHS and save lives”.
Dr Manik Arora, based at Rivergreen Medical Practice in Clifton, who has been a GP for 14 years, described his reaction to the events that night.
“We are not a really large practice, about 9,000 patients, with about 25 staff members. It’s a nice cosy family.
“In that context, when February and March came along there was trepidation about what was coming and there was fear about how we were going to manage and adapt.
“When the lockdown came it was a challenge to everything that we were doing.
“We still had patients calling up the next morning at 8am asking what was happening. We had to brief staff and reassure them on the changes. Websites updated overnight.”
Despite the changes forced upon the NHS by the virus, from January to October, there have been more than four-and-a-half million GP appointments in Nottinghamshire, with 52 percent being the same day or next.
The number of appointments which were booked on the same day or the following day was higher in 2020 than the previous year by around six percent.
Patients who did not have to come in to be seen had consultations over phone and video and were brought in if needed.
Dr Arora added: “This is a model of business that is dependent on onsite working. It has never gone off site. We don’t have remote work, it’s all on site.
“For the staff who were working from home having to shield, there’s a logistical challenge.
“We can’t recall anything like this ever before. We had to adapt.”
Practices had to adapt where possible, with waiting areas being taped off to ensure social distancing was carried out when patients needed to come in.
“Blood pressure checks and diabetes and asthma checks have not gone away during the pandemic,” Dr Arora added.
“When you’re trying to shift that gauge to do it remotely, if I was to think around any change it needs to time to adapt and work through. This was an overnight change being done across the whole sector. “You have to be creative.” Staff at the practice were able to give out blood pressure machines to patients shielding so they could send the readings to the doctor to go through with them.
Robana Hussain-mills said she saw the announcement as a “call to arms” and dedicated herself to adapting and still seeing her patients.
The practice nurse lives in Mansfield and is based at the Platform One surgery in Nottingham city centre.
She said: “We just got on with it like we had to. There were patients that still had to be seen, babies still needed vaccinating, smear tests and screening tests needing doing.”
Robana, who has been in nursing for 20 years, said they adapted to still see patients over online consultations or phone calls if they were unable to come into the practice or didn’t need to.
“There’s a lot of patients with diabetes or asthma so we adapted to seeing them over the computer on a call and went through their procedures with them.
“The fact Nottingham and Nottinghamshire’s NHS has had 4.5 million appointments is an incredible achievement.
“I fully believe general practice is the backbone of the NHS.
“We had to keep going or NUH and Sherwood Forest Hospitals could become overrun because that’s the first port of call for them in a lot of instances.
“2020 was the year of the nurse and midwife and I think staff have really stepped up to the challenge.”