Tales from trenches
From taking on multiple roles to coming out of retirement to help, staff on the frontline tell of their pride in doing their bit in the fight against the coronavirus
Three NHS Lanarkshire workers have risen to the challenges of the pandemic and helped reduce the spread of Covid by embracing considerable changes to their traditional working lives.
NHS Nurse Ashley Gardner is proud to have set an unusual record within the health board area for switching jobs more times in the past 12 months than any of her Lanarkshire colleagues.
And retirees Kenny Rogerson and Mark Ingram have swapped careers in the police service and academia to help keep people safe by joining Lanarkshire’s vital contact tracing teams.
Ashley, who has worked for NHS
Lanarkshire for nearly four years, has been redeployed to seven different roles in response to Covid.
Over the last year, her fluctuating posts have given her the opportunity to develop her knowledge and skills and build strong relationships with colleagues across the health board area.
Hundreds of NHS staff like Ashley have worked beyond their normal roles during the pandemic, including GPs who have been deployed to the Acute Respiratory Illness Centre and staff who have been transferred to vaccination centres.
Yet 29-year-old Ashley, who usually works with individuals and groups as a nurse in the small, nurse-led Keep Well team, can claim to rival the number of varied roles experienced by most of her colleagues during the pandemic. For a week, two weeks or several months at a time, she has worked within: the incident management team in public health at Kirklands; contact tracing of travellers returning from Italy in the early stages of Covid; Test and Protect at the community assessment centre in Airdrie; testing in the community and in the acute Covid wards at University Hospital Wishaw and, most recently, in vaccine delivery.
Ashley, who qualified as a nurse in 2012, says the past 12 months have been the most challenging in her career.
She explained: “I returned to my own job this week and am enjoying seeing my own patients again.
“Moving between teams was difficult and sometimes scary, with new colleagues, new settings, new routines and then Covid on top of the changes.
However, I feel I was very lucky. Every time I moved to a new team, they were very supportive and grateful for the extra help. You’re meeting people you’d never normally come across, which is really useful in my normal job.”
Also switching roles are Kenny and Mark, who have joined NHS Lanarkshire’s contact tracing teams in the last six months.
Kenny, a retired police officer from Law, followed in the footsteps of relatives who have been proud members of the NHS workforce – including one who worked at the former Law Hospital.
“In the current climate, I felt I’d be making a useful contribution to the cause of fighting the pandemic,” said Kenny, 57.
“I’ve found the system of working and being part of a team – while working alone at home – much like working for