CHANGED US FOREVER

A student nurse from Stirling University has detailed the last year of battling Covid on the front line.

Nicola Phillips was a second year nursing student at the university when coronavirus gripped the world.

Nicola is just one of scores of student nurses who put their skills to test as the NHS battled to keep coronavirus under control over the last year.

The former Army military clerk, originally from Dunblane, has worked in the acute assessment unit at Forth Valley Royal Hospital .

Now in the third year of her course, she has been balancing her studies with fighting the virus on the frontline.

Nicola, who now lives in Edinburgh, has been keeping an online blog, detailing life on the the ward.

Reflecting on a year since the outbreak of the pandemic, she said: “One minute we are just student nurses in our second year at university, feeling as though we know what to do and that journey we started is as difficult as it could get.

“We go on placements and stress over essays and exams because they are our biggest hurdles at the moment. We are full of life and all that there is to look forward to in the future and dreaming of the day we graduate, this is what keeps us going in this rollercoaster that is life when you are training to be a nurse.

“But we know what is ahead, it’s all laid out in schedules and timetables, we know what is expected of us. It has become our future and everything we know about our lives right now. It’s good