Coronavirus

It is three years since your (soon to be new nurse workforce) began their journey as a student nurse, at the start of a global pandemic. I wonder if we are ready to step foot into the real world of nursing. We might be ready and itching to get out…

The nursing role has evolved significantly in recent decades and continues to challenge engrained practices today. It became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic, when nursing as a ‘vocation’ was propelled into the public eye, that the perception of the role was as complex as ever. A stark contrast to previous,…

Covid-19 is the most serious health epidemic this century, with devastating consequences, including thousands of deaths worldwide. As the virus became more widespread, hospitals began to implement isolation and restriction measures. One initial measure was to withdraw nursing students from clinical placements – predominantly to reduce the spread of infection,…

Nearly three years on from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite significant progress in mitigating some of its worst predictions and effects, Covid-19 remains an ongoing concern for healthcare delivery, staff health and wellbeing and patient safety. This is especially true for nurses caring for people made most…

When we think of bucket lists – running the London Marathon, skydiving or climbing Mount Everest may come to mind. When a patient is terminally ill, their bucket list becomes a lot more meaningful and arguably more realistic. Long gone are the days of wanting to travel the world, it’s…

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen three fundamental infection prevention and control (IPC) failures: an erroneous assumption of the mode of transmission; a failure to recommend respiratory protection equipment (RPE) for healthcare workers (HCWs) caring for people with Covid-19; and the mistaken assertion of equivalent efficacy between RPE and fluid resistant…

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on health systems across the globe, with significant loss of life, alongside wider social and health effects that will be felt for many decades. In the initial phases of the pandemic, health systems focused on public health controls to manage acute hospital…

Utter astonishment. That, quite simply, is my response to the comments made by MP Michael Fabricant in suggesting that nurses were somehow complicit in the prime minister’s rule breaking. Misjudged, clumsy or just plain outrageous; his words used in trying to defend the behaviour of Boris Johnson and others for…

And just like that it’s closed, almost as quickly as it opened. Seems like forever ago now when we went to work at the then new Covid-19 Community Assessment Centre in Stirling back in March 2020. The health board responded to the crisis by pulling manpower from wherever it could…

Rapidly emerging evidence from research studies has led to changes in the treatment of people with Covid-19, saving countless lives as a result. Much of the rapid set-up of studies – with a median time of three days to open at site – was thanks to a widespread, dedicated research…