Once a nurse, always a nurse!

So, when I received the email asking for volunteers to help teach healthcare professionals who would be working at the Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate, the answer was always going to be ‘yes’, and I was not alone. Led by an incredibly dedicated and passionate leadership team, over three days we succeeded in writing and delivering an ‘Introduction to Intensive Care’ education programme to over two hundred healthcare staff volunteering to care for patients at the Nightingale during the pandemic.

What struck me most during this time was the amazing sense of teamwork and community amongst all involved and how at a time of crisis everybody from the army, healthcare professionals, staff from the Harrogate conference centre and educators have come together to provide the best care for the people of our region. It was also very humbling to hear stories of what the some of the volunteers were prepared to sacrifice in order to help others.

Once a colleague said to me that being a nurse was like ‘being a jack of all trades and a master of none’, I now have evidence that this is simply not true. What I witnessed at the Nightingale was a remarkable union of nurses and other healthcare professionals with expertise in many different fields including leadership, mental health, critical care, palliative care and education, resulting in an amazing achievement over a very short space of time. I consider myself privileged to be a very small part of such a mammoth achievement.