30 March 2021

Judith Gudgeon, a Consultant Anaesthetist, shares her thoughts and experiences over the past twelve months as part of the frontline clinical team battling coronavirus.

At the beginning none of us knew what to expect, everyone was very anxious both about their ability to cope and their own safety. Initially, I acted in a supporting role to my ICU colleagues to perform some of the daily care tasks to help the junior doctors. One of the most time-consuming jobs was turning the patients, we turned 7-10 patients a day and each time we did this we needed seven people. This put a big strain on the PPE, as we had to change between each patient to make sure infections weren’t passed on. Sometimes 140 lots of PPE would be used in a day, just for that task.

“It was heartbreaking to see patients trying to communicate with friends and family on phones, and iPads. I had personal experience of how hard this was because my own mother was admitted to Lewisham hospital and it made me realise how important it is to hear from the medical staff every day.”

“The second wave was so much bigger than the first. We tripled the number of ITU patients and this put a huge stress on the trained ITU nursing staff. Frimley is a fantastic place to work. I have great colleagues and the management have been very supportive. The stresses have been huge. I have seen great sadness but also joy, from seeing a patient recover and be reunited with family. I bow down in awe to the amazing nursing staff I work with every day in theatre and ITU. The camaraderie and support have been fantastic.”