Details have been obscured in some of the images, to protect patient identities.
“When I started getting my PPE next to the Covid ICU ward I realized what I was doing. What a privilege I have to see what’s really going on and make my own decisions. My first impressions were: this is true, the people looked sick, in danger and in the hands of doctors. Doctors and nurses were running around but also meditating. I saw one doctor just looking at a patient with his hands on his hips. I could almost hear him thinking.
I have seen a lot in my 25 years as a designer. Wars, famine, suffering and disease, but the feeling in the ward was something I had never seen. Only nurses and doctors speak medical words with no cats and no families or faces visible. I can only hear machines sweeping and scratching people’s shoes walking in corridors. No complaining, no crying, no feeling. If you look at the patients, they looked white like ghosts. I went to work. I went home that night and stayed up until 5am. It’s worrying, because the people I photographed looked young and fit. The youngest and worst I raised was 9 years older than me. “Graeme Robertson, illustrator.
Stretched out to capacity, University College Hospital London issued the call for medical volunteers to help. Among those who gave impetus to the world of physical and emotional drainage was the Covid-19 intensive care unit included consultant endocrinologist Dr Helen Simpson, 52, and University College London fourth-year medical students Seyi Adeleye and Theo Reback, both 21 .
Seyi Aleleye | Fourth year medical student
“That’s what I applied as a pharmacist,” said Aleleye, who has been supporting tired nursing workers. “And it was a baptism of fire.”
Therapeutic activities, such as taking vital opinions, extracting drugs, helping to turn patients, cleaning them, getting rid of urine and dirt, letting the burden on overburdened nurses reduce.
On her third day, a patient collapsed and their family returned. Aleleye knew the prognosis. “It was hard to see. You keep it together while you are there. But coming out, I stopped and had a little cry ”. Two days later, the patient died.
It wasn’t until she sat down and thought, “I saw someone take their last breath. That’s crazy. That’s something I’m still processing and I will continue to process what that means. ”
The most exciting are the times when employees enable FaceTime calls between patients and their families. “And you will hear the families. One particular case was very difficult because he was a younger patient, and they had a small child and heard the child sing to their parent. That’s sad. ”
Patients are often asleep. “You sit there, saying again, ‘You’re all right. You are safe. You are at UCH. ‘Some are sensible, but there are tubs like that they can’t talk about. “So he’s looking for ways to communicate.”
But another day she saw a patient discharge, now on her way to recovery, and later managed to walk out of hospital. “And that made me shout too, because you don’t see so many of them, and I knew they were amazingly released.”
Dr Helen Simpson | FRCP, PhD Consultant
Helen Simpson, in addition to her role as a consultant endocrinologist at UCH, now volunteers to help with ICU. “These are the sickest, the ones where more than 40% have died.”
“I can have two, and I look at them and think, ‘Well, it’s weird 50:50. ‘Of course a man will die and no one will. And I had never worked in an environment with a 50% mortality rate before.
“There are a lot of deaths, and staff are tired too.
“You’re basically non-stop when you hit the floor,” she said. Working in full PPE – which she has sometimes done for six hours without rest – is “very hot, sweaty and claustrophobic before the evening. It’s hard to even talk about how voices are being moved. ”
She is deeply moved by how Covid-19 has highlighted social inequality. The patients she sees are frontline workers with no choice but to work. “It’s the Uber driver, bus drivers, restaurant staff, delivery people, security guards. People think that old people are dying. Everyone I look after is in their 50s and 60s. ”
“In an ICU, you can see what it does for families. If your loved one is dying, and you get a 15-minute video call, and you can’t just visit the end of life, it’s very difficult to see the burden of suffering. ”
She worries about the long-term tax on health workers, at the coal front now for a year, who need time to recover and process. She is angry about regulatory rules, and at some government decisions.
But there are advantages: the incredible teamwork, the speed at the hospital’s fit. And when, in this almost inexhaustible world of Cpap coolers and devices, she gets the chance to see the man, not just the patient, like one woman who was taken off the shower and put on tube of breath. “And she laughed. It’s really inspiring, to see this person awake and laughing. You can see the man they are. “
She escapes by walking and cycling. “I’ll try to find out for nature.”
Theo Return | Fourth year medical student
Theo Rebank found that he was not prepared for the wide age range of those he helps. One of the patients – a woman in her later 20s – was very impressed. “That was an awful experience”.
It’s another sad time when the families of lovers will see airmen over a video call, he said. “You will hear, the first time they see them, and it is a great surprise. ”
He saw many, more than most in their early 20s. One patient, on an air conditioner, was on videocall with her family. “It was heartbreaking to see her young son say, ‘Hi mummy, I miss you. ‘She could hear but could not answer and could only open her eyes. ”
One particular moment was when another patient, on an ventilator for about 40 days, was awakened. He still had a tracheostomy tube in his neck. “And I said his name, and I asked him if he could hear me. And he shook. This was his first interaction with people. He could only nod. That was very special. It makes you feel like it’s worth it ”.
“I will keep this experience with me in my future clinical course,” he said. “When I feel outside my comfort zone whether it’s on my first day as a primary doctor or maybe one day as a consultant, I think back to a cold, winter day in the January 2021, when I enjoyed it in full PPE and into a room full of virus I spent the last 8 months doing everything I could to avoid, guided with a deep desire to do my part. ”