DEPUTY SISTER, INTENSIVE CARE
ROWAN GRIEVES juggles multiple roles at the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Belfast Nightingale with riding her grey mare Luna.
“Having worked in the Regional Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital for 15 years, I’m used to supporting families whose loved ones are dying, but Covid patients can’t have family around them and end-of-life care with no loved ones is extremely emotionally fatiguing. We do calls and video calls three times a day, but it’s an alien way to nurse.
Part of my role is looking after a team of staff and it can be incredibly stressful; for example, asking them to move from looking after one patient to another, and I get upset if they do. There are definitely times when it’s overwhelming, even if Belfast hasn’t been as badly affected by the pandemic as London.
Since last March I have combined working as I usually do in the Regional ICU, the largest ICU in Northern Ireland which treats mainly non-covid patients requiring critical care, with some shifts in the new Belfast Nightingale, where most of the Covid patients are cared for. Before the pandemic, I worked around 37.5 hours a week, but now it’s often 50-plus. I’m also a member of NISTAR, a critical care transfer team that has moved more than 200 critically ill Covid patients to ICUS.
I’m not sure that anything prepares you for a pandemic. Probably the hardest thing is working in PPE, which is truly exhausting and leaves you feeling that you can’t provide the same level of care. But I’m lucky that I’m not doing Covid nursing around the clock, like some.
We have had some good news stories — such as a previously very sick man sending in a thank you video and showing how he had surprised his grandchildren by being home for Christmas.
Such things are very moving, and I did tear up when everyone at Clantara Equestrian, where I keep my horse, Luna, had a whip round and gave me some horsey gift vouchers, in acknowledgement of my role as a key worker. It’s a measure of how brilliant everyone is there, always willing to lend a hand if I get held up at the hospital. I’m usually the last one on site: sometimes I don’t turn up until 11pm, by which time the owner, Ian Jackson, will already have given Luna her feed and hay. The moment the yard gate swings open I feel my work stresses disappear.
I found lockdown one particularly tough as the yard had to close. As it turned out, though, we were on high adrenaline during those early days, so I felt
“End-of-life care with no loved ones is extremely emotionally fatiguing”
completely drained after shifts and Ian taking care of Luna was a blessing. And she didn’t forget me. After weeks away, when I called her over, she neighed and cantered up to see me.
Luna isn’t a cuddly mare, but she seems to know when I need affection and will hang her head over my shoulder. I school or hack her up to four times a week. There’s nothing like having those two ears in front of you in the great outdoors.”