We didn’t see it coming
and we are ok. It can only get better.
“Then without warning, without knowing what had hit us, suddenly we are spiralled day-by-day deeper into a worldwide health pandemic, Covid.
“We didn’t see it coming, we had never heard of it, it wasn’t in our training schedules and we had no idea it was going to change our student lives as we knew it. One minute we are the only ones who are learning something new and the next everyone who surrounds us, everyone who was teaching us to be nurses, suddenly they are also faced with something they had never faced as a nurse, suddenly they are in a world they have never been in before and for us it’s completely terrifying.
“We know we are nurses despite the stage we are in training, but at that moment we have no idea how long for or if it will all be taken away. We have a choice, we can sit back and let that fear consume us or we can stand up and we can show the world what we have learned as professional and learned nurses so far.”
Nicola says that whilst working in the acute assessment unit, numerous people suffering from Covid came and went from the ward.
“Covid put all health professions and nurses in the forefront of the fight and we were among them and everything we once knew as being just a student nurse was gone,” she added.
“We felt fear and helplessness, we cried and we cared. We faced challenges beyond our stage, we felt stress and fear we weren’t supposed to know yet. But we rose up and we put ourselves forward, we all did what we could, whether that was out on the front in practice or helping plan out the future learning online.
“We fought beside our peers we once sat next to in a lecture theatre and we mustered every bit of strength we had to nurse beside our qualified colleagues who before were our mentors and teachers. Suddenly we had to be the nurses we dreamed we would be when we qualified, suddenly every notion of the journey we had come to know as difficult became something we wished we could be in again.
We completed our duties as students at the same time, we overcame, we adapted. We showed everyone and ourselves what we are made of.”
Nicola says that the student nurses who were drafted in under the most difficult of circumstances are now stronger than ever. She continued: “We helped many people say goodbye to loved ones or were a part of teams who did everything to make sure a person returned home. We helped combat the destruction and devastation that Covid brought.”
Nicola is now into the final six months of her university course, with aspirations of taking up a role with NHS Lothian, in a respiratory department at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, when she graduates.