Over the past year we have heard from many of our alumnae that work in the NHS and their experiences of working during Covid-19. 

Following school, Finola McDonagh (BGS, 2015), embarked on an Adult Nursing Degree at Oxford Brookes University. She was attracted to the course as it had a wide range of placements in different hospitals. Nursing was a career she was always interested in and during her time at school she gained work experience in practice nursing, geriatric care, palliative care and completed a phlebotomy course.

Since graduating, Finola has been working as a Critical Care Staff Nurse in the ECMO (Extra-corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. ECMO is a highly specialised technique and Finola completed her training for the unit shortly before the start of the first wave of the pandemic. Consequently, her ascent into working practice in the unit has been very fast paced and has culminated in an increased responsibility in the number of patients she cares for.

Finola said her work has been very mentally and emotionally draining during the pandemic and has been finding wearing PPE all day very difficult too. She also touched on how difficult it has been talking to the families of patients who have been unable to see their loved ones. Finola confirmed that she has just received the first part of her Pfizer vaccination.

There are only six specialist ECMO centres in the country and ECMO is a medical intervention that provides a form of life support to patients suffering severely with respiratory failure: a specialist intensive care life support machine which pumps oxygen into a patient’s blood, taking the pressure off their lungs. Typically, the unit accommodates patients who are recovering from post cardiac surgery, but since the rise of Covid-19 the unit is now majority occupied by these patients suffering with the worst symptoms of the virus in their thoracic cavity. Most of them have been treated in other hospitals previously, before moving to hospitals such as the Royal Papworth for specialist care. The unit is running above capacity, utilising many medics from other areas of the hospital as the demand for the unit has surged.

The work of Finola’s department was recently highlighted on the BBC News HERE.