The Vice-President of the IHCA Dr Laura Durcan has said she
has been extremely “heartened” by the reaction to staff to the Covid-19 crisis,
hailing their reaction as “phenomenal”.
Dr Durcan, who works as a Consultant Rheumatologist in
Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, told the Medical Independent healthcare staff
who are working at the frontline of the hospital have “stepped up to every
question” asked of them.
“The atmosphere in the hospital is one of quiet,” according to
Dr Durcan.
“Things are still quite quiet because we are not doing
outpatients. You don’t see the footfall that you’d usually see from people
going to appointments, people going to get scan etc. It is like we are poised
waiting for everything to truly start.
“I do a lot of rostering in the hospital, and I have been
truly heartened by the number of people who have stepped up for more work; the
number of people who have stepped in from academic roles, volunteering to take
on heavy call rotas; the number of people who have already agreed to go above
and beyond what is the remit of their job to look after patients.”
At the same time, Dr Durcan said she is apprehensive about
the challenge that lies ahead.
“I am scared for the staff; scared for the patients; and a
bit scared for us all. But the atmosphere and the morale has been nothing short
of phenomenal,” she said.
“There also have been things that make a big difference to
people. Free parking for staff, for example, I know that sounds like such a
small thing but it has been hugely appreciated. It is an acknowledgement that
people can’t safely travel on public transport when they are going to and from
a healthcare setting. We are really grateful for that. And that has made a huge
difference to our nurses and our doctors.”
She also said that the provision of scrubs for staff, so
they do not come home with contaminated clothes, is welcome.
“So we go into hospital in our normal clothes, we change
into scrubs, and we change again when we go home. Essentially our home clothes
are never contaminated by the hospital,” she said.
“And those small things make people feel a little bit safer,
and little bit more valued. The same can be said of the PPE [personal
protective equipment] issue.”
Dr Durcan added the Government needs to explore every avenue
in obtaining PPE for healthcare staff, despite the recent deal struck with
China.
While welcoming the deal Dr Durcan said this will not be
enough due to the scale of the Covid-19 crisis, describing healthcare staff
dealing with the coronavirus without PPE as “going to war without armour”.
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