SURGERY HAD TO SHUT –
GP reveals her two young children begged her not to go into work
IN NOVEMBER Cloughmore Surgery in the Splott area of Cardiff was in the midst of a serious coronavirus outbreak. Three of its four doctors, along with most of its nursing and administration staff, had to self-isolate or call in sick as Covid-19 swept through the practice.
Its sole surviving GP, Dr Sayma Ahmed, admitted it was incredibly scary seeing her more experienced colleagues and their families fall victim to the virus one by one.
“I was the last man standing. It was terrifying. I just had to keep going because patients don’t stop becoming unwell,” she said.
“I’m not a partner [at the surgery], but I was having to run things at management level, liaising with the health board and the small number of admin staff we had left in our team.
“Then a few days later I came into work, had a temperature and had to leave straight away. That afternoon we had to close down the surgery as there weren’t enough of us to run it.
“You never think something like that is going to happen. It was a big shock.”
The closure was all the more frustrating for Dr Ahmed as the practice had done so well to keep the virus at bay during the first wave.
Since March a whole host of social distancing and hand-washing protocols had been put in place, a car parking system had been created and a gazebo had been erected outside to keep potential Covid-positive patients separate.
“Luckily we moved quite quickly at the beginning and ordered our own scrubs – but they later ran out and you couldn’t get them anywhere online,” she said.
“We had people voluntarily stitching us scrubs. We had a gentleman making us visors for free using a 3D printer. We did receive PPE from the health board, it took a while to permeate down.
“I have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, and they used to cry every morning telling me not to go to work because they thought I might die. There were so many unknowns about coronavirus in the early stages.”
Following the significant outbreak in November 2020, the neighbouring Four Elms Medical Centre stepped in to take on Cloughmore Surgery’s patients – allowing staff time to recover from the virus.
“Although we were running an ‘emergency system’, patient care wasn’t compromised. They could still be seen and pick up prescriptions.
“We’re lucky to have a good GP cluster and team between us, and the GPs who’d become ill first and were recovering started working from home.”
Immediately upon returning home, Dr Ahmed, 34, isolated in a bedroom away from the rest of her family – but it wasn’t long before her husband Tariq was infected too.
“Being a GP you obviously get to know quite a bit about Covid, but when you actually have it you’re not a doctor any more, you’re a patient,” she recalled.
“I was very poorly for the first three days and couldn’t get out of bed. Then, unfortunately, my husband ended up getting it pretty badly. He became extremely breathless after about day seven or eight and needed to go into hospital.
“He’s 34, really fit and healthy, has no medical history at all and has run marathons. He’d never be put into a higher risk category. It just goes to show that the virus doesn’t discriminate.”
At the University Hospital of Wales (UHW) in Cardiff, Tariq was placed under observation while doctors decided whether to give him additional oxygen support.
“He developed pneumonitis in the lungs, but because he’s young his body managed to compensate and we brought him home within 24 hours,” she added.
“He was very unwell for several days afterwards. Maybe he should have gone back into hospital, but he did eventually get through it.”
Dr Ahmed, who also works as an urgent care doctor for Aneurin Bevan UHB, said it took her and her husband more than two months for their health to return to pre-Covid levels.
“I started taking the kids back to school three weeks after [I’d become ill], and just doing that drop-off was exhausting. I couldn’t even walk the distance from the car to the school gates. I’d then have to come home to sleep for two or three hours.
“For my husband, even walking up the stairs was a struggle six weeks after he was ill.”
To make matters worse, Dr Ahmed’s father-in-law was also struck down with Covid-19 and was admitted to hospital on oxygen for 10 days. He also spent several hours outside in an ambulance waiting to be admitted when bed occupancy rates were at record levels.
“It just felt like one thing after another. He didn’t have the classic symptoms, he just wasn’t moving out of bed. I think that simple sign should ring alarm bells for people.”
Dr Ahmed admitted that trying to find the right balance between looking after her two young children – and her patients – over the past 12 months has been a tough ask.
“No matter what your shift is like, you still have to come home, clean up the toys, figure out what they’re going to have for lunch, make sure they’ve brushed their teeth,” she added.
“I’m still one of those frustrated mums who tells their children several times to put their socks and shoes on when they still haven’t done it.”
Cloughmore Surgery, on South Park Road, reopened 10 days on from the closure. All the staff have now recovered to take on a new challenge – vaccinating as many of their registered patients as possible.
“We’ve had a really good uptake of the vaccination in our surgery across the board. We’ve had people calling up with various questions, but once they’ve had a chat with us – and been directed to relevant resources – they feel a lot more reassured,” Dr Ahmed added.
“We’ve had to allocate nurses and doctors time for [this rollout] and the admin involved. The health board allocates us a certain amount of vaccines per week and we then figure out how we book patients in. It’s running very smoothly.”
Some of the lowest update of the vaccine has been among those in black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) communities.
Dr Ahmed, who is a member of the newly created Muslim Doctors Cymru, said it was the job of doctors, other health professionals and faith leaders to hammer home the safety of the jab.
“The ever-changing nature of the pandemic is scary enough, but when English isn’t your first language it can be very confusing,” she said.
“The misinformation machine has really kicked in, and I think it’s peaked with the vaccination programme. It’s amazing how quickly untruths can spread – and that’s where Muslim Doctors Cymru can step in.
“We need to be producing information in different languages so it can be given to people before the misinformation hits so they have something to counter it.
“The main questions are ‘was it rushed?’, ‘ what are the long-term side-effects?’ and ‘what does it contain?’. We are local doctors, we are familiar faces and people can hopefully relate to us and what we’re telling them.”
To help improve vaccination rates in Muslim communities, Jamia Mosque in Pillgwenlly, Newport, will open as a vaccination hub on Tuesday.
It will be open to anybody over the age of 60 who has not yet received their first jab, and patients will not need to book an appointment prior to coming along.
“By getting vaccinated we are one step closer to coming out of the pandemic, which hopefully means we can go shopping, go to restaurants, go to weddings and see our loved ones again.”