Can you just start by saying your name and what your name?
I'm Siobhan Gardner, and I'm at the moment I'm a clinical research nurse.
Okay, that's wonderful.
And without telling me your entire life story, if you want to just go back to the beginning, How did you first get interested in nursing?
Decides that's what you wanted to do?
I've been a nurse since I qualified in Cambridge in 95, and I bounced around doing a lot of different kinds of nursing.
Actually, once I qualified and I travelled abroad, I went to, um, I spent some time in New Zealand and Australia.
Um, and I met my husband in New Zealand and that's when it was time for me to come home.
So I was married in 2002. Didn't get into, into research until I was lecturing.
I was teaching. Um, by that time I was then teaching and training nurses where we're at Thames Valley University.
Right. Which is now the University of West London. Right on.
I was based at Slough, and at the same time I was there, I did the I did a master's in research at the same time as teaching.
However, I love teaching, but at the same time, I needed to be part of the clinical space.
Really. So when are you acting as a nurse when you were teaching as well?
No, no, no. Because Debbie, it was it was I was all in the university because all the students obviously were in the working in the hospitals.
But also they had academic studies which they which were at the university.
So I was based in the university. It's for the Slough campus, which isn't there anymore.
And I wanted to get back to clinical practice.
So obviously you how did you find out about research?
Research, nursing. Oh God. Think that would be something you'd like to do?
I don't know. I needed to marry up the fact that I was interested in this.
I was interested in research. I want to find it for me. I always want to find out the nitty gritty of what makes things tick.
And I think that's part of the reasons why I enjoy kind of teaching.
It was being able to understand, pick things apart and be able to put them back together, you know?
And how did I know about research nursing?
Do you know? I can't even remember how it happened.
I might even have been looking at jobs from when I left because the NHS has got its own
website for jobs and I was probably just going through jobs and research and I popped up.
It was probably something as simple as that. Or I was trawling through the RCN website or something along those lines.
It was never simple for me. It was always I would I would have been trawling through information to be able to come up with something.
I never did everything straightforward. So I started I started with dental, which is the dementia and neurodegenerative disease research network.
Right. And and that was really very early days of research with the for research nurses me and now with the CRM.
So that was the clinical research network which at the NIH, which is the National Institutes of Health Research so arm of the NHS.
Yeah. And so I went back into the NHS and worked said with Dan John in Berkshire in the mental health practices.
It was very research naive because we were looking after dementia patients bringing, bringing dementia research into Berkshire mainly.
Um, sorry, bye research. Now, if you mean there hasn't been any research.
No, no, no, no. Really. And we needed to embedded within, within NHS so that we would, so that we were coming into contact with patients.
So we were placed well, we were placed with the research team.
Um, but we also went out into these, into the mental health practice and we had to build up relationships with the teams,
with the mental health teams, with the doctors and with the nurses that were visiting patients.
And we had to encourage them to refer patients to, to see us so that they could become involved in the studies that you know and remove any.
So what we were looking at and so we were looking after the dementia portfolio.
So some of those were commercial studies.
I actually had a what was called an adult background, so I didn't have a mental health background of nursing.
I came in to my research degree, really,
and the first study that we did was a huge observational study and it was really the best thing for us because it was interviews.
You were doing lots of psychometric testing of both the carer and, and the.
The patient and we were busy. So it was it was observational and I can't even remember who took company lights,
but we wanted to be able to understand living with dementia at home because it was because people
didn't really know much about it and it was kept very much secret within within families.
And often you didn't really know what was going on with living with dementia outside of the home.
And so it was an absolute iron opener for me. I learnt more than I could possibly learn any other way.
So we would interviewing both the carers and the person with dementia and we were
going through all this battery of tests and we'd find out about where they were,
what it was like to live with, live with dementia, and then we'd visit them again.
I think we would visit them at six month intervals I think over the course of 18 months.
So we had I think we would we did really, really well because we got together when the two of us got together and started going,
I think we were the first we were the first site to get our first patient, I think the first to reach our target.
But we did really well. And so that was one of the questions.
And then of course, we had different we had a couple of drug trials and we opened up a centre at the University of Reading.
They'd given us some space there where we used to have people come and see us and the
drug trials and my daughter come and see our psychiatrist who was working with us.
And I did that for five years probably.
I said, Let's just fill in. So this is a very collaborative project, it sounds like.
So you would probably would have had psychiatrists or psychologists on the team as well.
We had one as one psychiatrist who was he was our PI, so he's our primary investigator.
And then we had two nurses, right. And we were the specifically the role of the of the research nurse.
So we were visiting patients. So we essentially the patient was the research nurse.
Where it comes with this is a most important fundamental aspect for me of being research nurse,
is that we are the conduit between practice, between the patients and between and between the doctors.
That's essentially what we are even in practice, you know, when we're living in a clinical space,
that's what we can do as a research and we are responsible for research delivery.
So they have they've got projects.
I've got a question to ask and however we are asking that of the patient, that's up to us to be able to make that happen.
So we recruit patients. So we might do this while patients, patients or anybody would need to be have given permission to be approached.
Usually this would come by a referral from a doctor. So this is why we need the teams, like the nurses and the doctors to say to us,
Can you please come and to refer them to us and say, Would you like to be part of research?
And if they would, if they were happy with that, then they will they would contact us or they would put us in touch and they
would go to study and then you would take them through the consent process.
That was the fabulous thing about JRC. It was really easy to recruit to an observational study.
And the thing was we found what name did you give it observational study to do?
That was the name of the study as it was called. So I have absolutely no idea.
I can't remember g e r a lovely thank you.
So I have absolutely no idea what it stands for now because it's too long ago.
That was back in 2010. So but with that study, it's we got to know so much about patients and we were accompanying what we're saying now.
What was I saying? Since we're talking about Oh, we're talking about consultants.
It was sort of yes, but it was easy to recruit for studies because people had so much to say.
And we were spending like 24 hours in people's homes, you know,
because we'd have the interview with the care and we'd have the interview with a patient.
So often, Lynn and I would with that was my the research nurse. We'd do it together.
And then so that one of us would do the carer interviews and one of us to do the patient interviews, and that's how it was.
And they were very quite profound. And very often your carer was just, it was an opportunity to just offload very often, quite often were tears.
I mean I didn't, I did it however long before five years. That was as much as I could do after that because it was really quite draining really.
But yeah, that was an absolute lie and said we were recruiting for that study.
So that was easy because that was just a question of psychometric testing of course, and we had done it for all dementia studies.
It's double double consent because you have to have your patient and your carer.
Carer Yeah, always. And then we went on to and then thought it would be the same for Doug Childs,
but we would be able we would do all recruitment so the recruitment would happen through us.
So drug trials, it was trickier because but dementia by by its very nature,
you've got gatekeepers, obviously, people that are very protective of the person with dementia.
So I've got to be very certain and very careful and we weren't sure about what was going on with the it was earlier days when we were met,
we were medicating dementia and people knew much less even then back in 2010 and they did now.
It was very early on. So I think that's really when a lot of investment was happening at that time,
because David Cameron was talking a lot about putting money into dementia.
So I did that for four or five years really, I think it was whenever it was,
they were very good about looking after me and taking care of me with I had two small children at the time,
so my part time I was it all worked very well really.
And I had the car and I was essentially driving around visiting people at home because it was the best way
to see people with dementia because it's too difficult to try and get them to come out to their houses.
So that's essentially what I was doing in Berkshire.
And then for me it was time to come back to Oxford because when we first got married we
were in Oxford and from there I was when I went to Rome to Slough to work and I went back,
I went again. What you would always do for any nice looking for a job, You go to the NHS jobs website, that's what you do.
And I went and there was a job advertised to work in gastroenterology, endoscopy, and I was, well, you know, I'd gone for a few,
but for this job it was I was based in endoscopy and given the fact that when I first qualified,
if I went back to 95 or 2000, it was one of my first jobs was in endoscopy.
I knew I had the background. So I also I knew how to deliver studies and I also knew how to work the endoscopy.
So I was completely confident in that area of work.
So and I kind of, you know, so that was 2014.
So yeah, for the next few years I kind of gravitated around gastro gastroenterology either employed by the university or employed by the trust,
because you tend to work very closely together because you've got contact with base,
you always have a contact with the you've always got to have a contact with the trust in order to be able to communicate with patients.
And obviously the university is full of research and dev obviously.
So to complicate matters further, my husband was seconded to Philadelphia.
We worked in publishing so for 2021, believe 2017, 2018 and 2019,
we were in Philadelphia and we came back and I came back into a gastroenterology job.
And in September 2019. Right.
Okay. With a familiar team because they were people that I knew.
So those colleagues just slotted back into it. And so it was I was collecting samples from patients who had inflammatory bowel disease in endoscopy,
and then we would be giving them to the researchers in one of the research buildings who would be doing research into inflammatory bowel disease.
And then of course I was working on my contract was with New York University employment contract,
and I obviously had an honorary contract with the Trust, which enabled me to be able to access patients and their notes.
And so that was. Duffer.
I remember very early on about January when all the emails started coming through about K-Fed.
And that's that's going to be my next question. Yes. About the well, it was emails mainly.
What we knew a bit about it on the news, to be honest.
But I think to be honest, we picked it up in our emails and they were like, we're not really worried about it at the moment.
I remember that January and say, We don't think we'll be fine, but we'll let you know as it develops.
I think even up until two, what, two weeks before shut down, they were telling us we didn't have anything to worry about and I think wasn't waiting.
I think the first patient was found or something. It wasn't that far away. Somebody came back from skate, but there was a ski trip by half term.
That would have been the end of February and brought it back with them as well.
And. We started talking about what were we going to do with that?
We knew then that trust was moving into a different mode.
They were making preparations for what were they going to do because we knew it hit Italy by this time and it was raging through Spain as well.
And I would be reading stuff from other professionals who were saying, you know, don't be complacent at all.
It's coming, you know, and when it hits. So we were all just kind of I could feel it just ramping up gently, really gently.
And we knew that research was going to be shut down. We were quiet.
It was for what we would do. We were just collecting samples so we could just stop.
We didn't have to shut anything else down, so we need to know.
So all it meant that as research nurses,
we weren't going into endoscopy because we dealt with endoscopy was going to basically have to close down for doing anything outside of emergency.
So it seemed like for our team, which was small for those of us, everybody was initially was,
was at home and but I was I wasn't happy there at all because I just wanted to be in the thick of it really.
We that was quite adamant about that. But I didn't have an NHS contact I was with, with the university.
So to a certain extent we didn't, we weren't part of the CRM.
So the CRM was the clinical research network, right, that created the taskforce.
Yeah. So I kind of volunteered in a way because I was again, I was,
I was kind of invisible because research nurses employed by the majority of them were employed by the trust,
so that those of us in jobs are outside of it, but we're not regarded as, um, I don't know, we're not, we're not core.
Mainly I think what we tend to be, we're not, we don't tend to be quite as clinical facing at the old one,
but the paid for money that employed by the NHS.
So because we're essentially employed by, we're put in place by the groups, by the university groups that were looking for research.
So we weren't so it wasn't a commercial, we weren't commercially driven at all because we were coming from the university.
So it's different in the NHS where it was often a big drug company that was driving that research, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it's complicated. Yeah. So we were so I was potentially working for one of the groups.
Yeah. And so I asked my manager, I said, What can I do?
And I knew that to get our posts funded,
I think my post might have been indirectly some way because obviously for all our research funding it would come.
A lot of it comes to the NHS and it came through that by the CEO of the Clinical Research Network
and I think we used that in order to be able to point me in the direction of the team and.
David Porter was one of the managers.
I knew it would usher in. So he was the NHS Grade seven, I think.
Bond seven, that is that David Gordon?
I know he said he was been his local, I think Thames Valley.
Yes, yeah. The Thames Valley Research Network work. And I got in touch with him and I said I want, I want to help.
And they said, Oh we don't know what you're going to do.
Whether you would you, would you go to the vaccines because obviously that was if I met AEG or would you be in the task force?
And I was I knew I'd be able to what let's let's just straighten out what the taskforce is.
Okay. So when did the taskforce come into being So this this is what this is it coming together because it was it was a scramble.
That's exactly what it was. It was a scramble. So when I got this from so we didn't I didn't know this.
I said I didn't know whether I'd go to OPG. Nobody knew what the taskforce was at this time.
They were talking about a taskforce which was going to be made up of nurses that
were essentially furloughed is not the term because we were never furlough.
But people who's who's who's normal research work was halted.
Yes, So so there were there were lots there was like, who do we have?
Ophthalmology, rheumatology, gastroenterology, Um, those teams, were we all they would they obviously didn't have any research going on.
And so what were we going to do with this? And they created a taskforce because we knew that recovery was coming down the line.
That study was created. The Korea V trial was created in nine days.
You know, you would know that. Yes. And so we knew that was coming.
We knew that was coming down the line to how was that going to be delivered.
And I was happy with being on the clinical face because I would be able to work.
I was quite happy to cannula eight patients and and just to be in clinical space.
I didn't I wasn't faced by any of that. I was desperate to be right there in the middle of it all.
So I said, What can I do? And I just got an email phone.
Thanks. Thanks for saying that you'll join. I didn't know who David Porter was, but you know, it was just a few emails here, there and everywhere.
And I said, Oh, well, come along and meet in the BRC,
which is the BRC offices on level four of the John Ratcliffe Come and meet us on this day is Research Centre Fellow.
I should note that I do know this biomedical research centre.
That's it. Yes, exactly. So this is a problem using another company.
Forget what the proper words are. So yeah. And so that I was given a date and I think it's something like the 10th of April.
It's something like we're talking about like four years ago now is now 2023 years ago.
Three years ago now. Exactly. And it was something like that.
Will you meet on that day? And I didn't know what to wear.
I didn't you know what? Didn't know what we were doing? Well, no, actually, that's not true.
I did. I just went along in my in my trusty uniform that I had.
And then I had my own clothes because people were like, kind of scared.
You know, We got to a point where people didn't want to go into work and people saying they weren't going to work for me.
I don't know what it is about nurses maybe very similar to like it's a bit like it's not going to happen to me.
You know, you feel kind of invincible and we're looking after people that are sick.
It wasn't going to happen to us and that's how I felt.
I know that wasn't true of a lot of everybody, but for me it was so I remember the announcement came from Boris Johnson,
I think wasn't it was 22 the morning and everything had shut down and everything's quiet.
And so when we had to go in on that day, my husband was quite happy to drive me in.
Actually, we were living in Summertown at the time and it was dead, just quiet.
There was nothing going on. It was it was lovely. And of course the weather then was lovely as well, wasn't it?
We're going to work and everybody else is like paddleboarding up and down the river.
But so we when we went, so we went in and it was.
Chaos. We walked in to the balcony and Mark and I should remember his name.
I know all of these people. There were 45. There were so many people all gathered in that room that morning.
Mark Ainsworth Now, Mark, Mark Ainsworth was the person that was going to be leading.
I didn't know any of these people by mind. I didn't know any of these people.
We just went into a room and it was chaos. Nobody knew what was happening.
We were scrambling around trying to find computers, trying to find desks because all the normal people in the bay I see were obviously at home.
And we were just taking over this office space and we knew that we had delivered a study recovery.
And Alex Mintz came in to talk to all of us.
And I think we were all standing around either in scrubs or, oh, yeah, uniforms, essentially, about this whole kind of thing about,
of course, we want my masks at this point, but we did know we needed to be wearing you need to be wearing clinical uniforms, essentially.
So So they offered us scrubs.
So we all just grabbed, you know, our own scrubs to wear.
And Alex MENSAH told spoke to all of us about the recovery trial.
And then they had this other study called Disarray. And then the and then this other study called sepsis.
Immuno immuno mix. I can always struggle to say that one.
So we recovery was the big drug trial.
And then, of course, so it was a data study. So we need permission to basically use data for that study.
And then sepsis immuno mix was a drug trial.
It wasn't a trial. It was we were taking blood. We wanted to have a look at the activity for height.
Felt very poorly patients. So that was ICU patients.
So that was really, really sick patients that would would be on that study.
I think we this is where we were getting information about how COVID was affecting affecting people in the acute stage.
Anyway, I remember there was a whole group of people and I was thinking there was a DEA team group up there and I was thinking that because.
Okay, So I remember. You must have done so many work in your time.
No. You go into my training now. Well, training.
I mean, I was 95 when I was 20. Know, that was. That was long time ago.
No, no, no, no, it wasn't. But the thing about this was there were no hard and fast rules.
She would literally we were all flying by the seat of our pants. There was no right or wrong way to do anything.
And essentially all the way through nursing. My philosophy has always been if you can communicate with patients, if you can,
if you kept them safe in the centre of everything, you could do anything.
And that's how I felt really just so I couldn't could do anything.
So. So I don't know.
It just is weird. It was really emotional time, you know?
So I said the A&E team were there.
That was there. They were coming. They came up and.
Mark was when I was introduced to him.
He was the lead research nurse for what's known as DDT, which is a direct delivery team.
So the NHS and NHS had their own group of nurses which were based over the the NOC were they've got a little spare,
they've got a little space over there and they've got these, this team of nurses of take on loads of projects and they kind of fill in the holes.
So for groups that can't do research, that can't afford nurses or can't do facilitate a project without a research nurse,
this direct delivery team would take home responsibility for making this study.
What do this study for them? So I don't know how many nurses they had on their team, probably up to ten or something.
So himself and his team came over and they were supposed to be leading, leading this.
This is this is I gauge this all on the day.
I wouldn't have known any of this beforehand because I was quite isolated as a as a research but search team working for the university,
we work because this is true of much of research nursing is that we exist in pockets.
We are trying to change that. Now. That scope is one of the thing that's happened over that, but we very much existed in isolation,
and so I didn't really know many of the NHS team well, I didn't know any of them,
so we were just literally thrown into that and there was panic and there were some people
really not happy to be working and some people that were sitting around didn't know what to do.
Some people like some people were like, Well, you could see them just really enjoying the the kind of the buzz.
And then there was some people that were like really afraid, people that had people that had been living with elderly family members.
They were concerned and. We were all afraid.
And I remember, but I remember really liking Mark immediately.
And that wasn't true of some people didn't like the disorganisation.
It made them very nervous. And I remember myself trying to distance myself from those people who started complaining early on because I was thinking,
okay, this is this is too negative. I can't be around this.
I knew if I wanted to be on the pulse point, I needed to be with the new team.
So I said to Mark when the whole room was really, really busy and Alex MENSAH would come in and he said,
These are the three studies we want to recruit to, and preferably we'd like three consents at a time.
Now this is really this is a big ask, but we were desperate, you know, And so putting each patient into all three,
all three studies, every patient would need to be and these are sick patients.
And so I was when he would Mark brought everybody together and he and he started delivery saying what people.
Well I think everybody decided more or less themselves most of us decided what we were going to do.
I know early on I said I I'll go with the A&E team. And so I went off with them downstairs into into A&E.
And we started looking at these studies and we had to work out how we were going to go ahead.
We have what we were going to do and we end.
And most of our recruitment ended up because of the A&E.
Nurses were much more acute. Therefore, they were doing most of the cannulation.
So no, not cut, but not cannulation being a puncture.
So we were taking bloods for the septicaemia Amy nomics which was actually which was looked after by the A-Team.
I think they were already doing that study early on.
So as I understand it, I think the DTT had come in and spoken to the A&E team early on to try and decide what they were going to do.
And so that was where that's where it started before we all went up to the BRC and.
We went to that.
So that's how the task force started with 45 people.
I think the second day when we come back, there weren't as many people and I think people were making decisions then about what they were going to do.
I think some people must have gone over to I know the vaccine stuff had already started and so
some people might have gone over there and I think we needed to kind of find our own space.
So people are on the computer and then people started to get it together in pairs.
So it was kind of organic.
I don't say it was really all good because Mark was very much an inclusive leadership leader and he because because he was saying that as.
He knew that research, as we've all experienced. We all knew what we were doing.
And he didn't know any more than we did what we needed to do.
So he felt what he needed to do was able to protect us from the noise that was kind of going on now
and actually deliver because the media was starting to get really interested in what was going on.
And then of course, they'd started up this and the NHS had this list of what they called it up studies,
which were urgent public health studies, and that was the list. Recovery was right there.
And there were these other studies that were vying for all the blood they wanted from all these patients.
And of course, we were the route to getting hold of all these very sick patients.
And so I knew that we were seeing the sickest patients because we were taking blood.
So we would get so they'd move they'd restructured the hospital in the fact that they had created a kind of stepdown.
We had our own study it. At the moment, ITU doesn't do do not have a step down.
Ward So you go from ITU, you straight onto the ward.
They needed to create a step town where they had patients that weren't ill enough to be in ICU, but not well enough to be on the ward.
So they were still having CPR or help in order to require a lot of help in order to be able to breathe.
So we went on to one of the cardiac wards, which basically became a respiratory and respiratory ward and.
It is. Absolutely. It was where everything was all happening.
We had people that were really, really sick.
I know that the rest of the others that were in the BRC went around to all the areas which had patients and they went in pairs.
But these patients were on the ward often a whole bay just became covered.
Whereas with the A&E team we were doing proper follow on level three PPE changes when we had to go into wards.
So when we went into that area, nobody knew who had anywhere else was because we were all dressed up.
So we literally didn't know who each other, each other, or even people that we knew.
We didn't know who we were.
And so it was the challenge was for us to be able to find the staff nurses that were looking after the patients that we needed to see them.
We needed to be able to find the doctors. Patients were very often never too sick.
They were too sick to be able to consent to these.
And I remember speaking to some patients and we needed to think about how we had three consents that we needed.
How did we ask patients to consent to studies when they were when they were really sick?
How did we do it so that we made it as concise as possible?
Now, we were lucky in the fact that everybody knew about recovery at this stage.
Anybody watching the news. So Boris for once did as a favour on this stage.
So people knew about they knew that we were going to knew. We still need research.
I can't remember who it was who said or I don't know if we need to research our way out of this thing.
We knew that's what we were going to do. So for once, you know, we were flying as research nurses.
We could say we were research nurses and where with we always struggled a bit as part of being part of the clinical team,
we accepted as part of the clinical team all having a space in the in the clinical team.
Suddenly we were important and it was much easier for us to be able to talk to patients and be able to talk to to say,
well, we're research nurses or we're on the recovery trial. Oh yeah, yeah, that's fine.
So we could talk to patients when we went on board working with c, c, c t w when we were on the what it was called cardiac ward.
But at that time it was respiratory. We were we would go in and visit patients who I just remembered seeing, you know, we'd have a patient,
we talked to a patient who could literally just wave at us really just or, you know,
and if they weren't conscious enough in order to be able to give us consent for consent,
then we needed to speak to the clinical team and ask them to sign on their behalf is what we needed to do.
And then we had to try and take and take blood.
So we worked in pairs so that one of us stayed outside and one of us would be inside because we had to when we were in the room,
we were in fact dirty and then we had to clean member of staff outside and then we had to strip off when we came outside of the room.
But it was. I just remember some days you would go back and, you know, your patient wouldn't be there anymore.
They'd have died overnight. So. Yeah.
And I was and it was hard because I had been a research nurse by then for, well, ten years,
and I've been teaching for five years before about to be in that acute clinical space.
It had been easily 15 years and you know, that was really,
really hard because suddenly I was thrown back to being that grade nurse that I was my
early twenties and just not knowing what the [INAUDIBLE] was going on around me at all,
you know? And there was nobody.
And I remember then of course, there were these issues with transferring patients between wards and we had this patient come from,
I don't know where they were.
And this Treadstone row happening between a clinician, a medic coming on to into our unit, and everybody was all dressed up in PPE X-ray,
and they were literally just coming on with a mask and they were complaining about and this was
this medic was obviously frightened because I couldn't imagine why they would get so upset.
And so Cross went the patient when they were trying to hand them over and literally laid into all the staff around them,
complaining about the fact that they'd come onto the ward and they didn't have all the
protection that everybody else was wearing around them and they hadn't been warned about it.
And then the thing is, everybody was just scrambling. That was exactly what was happening.
Nobody knew there was no organisation at that point. We were just trying to keep people alive.
You know what I'd come did come on.
And it was after a couple of days you start to recognise the same people in PE and you realise they just kind of hadn't gone home, you know.
And it was, it was what they called.
Hey, I remember we took our masks off because I remember the longest I spent in my mask for me was 2 hours.
It was this, this was a properly fitted one. Properly. Yeah.
The those ones though, they call them PPE three now ones that are really tight ones that you put on.
So not them, not the breathing apparatus,
they were just the type masks and they caught and they just sat on your face so tightly when you took them off.
They called them here and spoke. Here marks all over your face.
And the relief to get that stuff off when you came out was amazing.
But it was the tension that was on that ward all the time. I just wonder how people lived with it.
And I remember having been so grateful to be with the team because they're just so sensible.
And none of this, none of the because they live with this all the time, this kind of frenetic atmosphere.
And for most of those research nurses, it's all very calm what we do.
And so I was completely thrown by by that atmosphere on a couple of occasions
it for me because I remember this patient was talking to me and he had just
come onto the ward and I was trying to talk to him and he was waving at me and
he was trying to I just couldn't work out what he was trying to say to me.
And he kept pulling his blanket down, pulling his blanket down over and over and over again.
And I kept putting his blanket up because I then was beginning to dawn and I thought, I think dementia delirium, you know,
because delirium in acute confusion when you go and I remember all he was,
he was I tried to ask for a bottle and he completely soaked the bed when I was there.
And I was absolutely distraught and I was distraught.
And I just wanted to stay and just tidy up and just to be able to feel like not so helpless.
And it was Yeah. And he does always when she's just coming to direct me out, she said, no, you can't sort this out.
This isn't your problem, you know. So she just took me away really, And I was so grateful.
And how long did you go on working in those kind of conditions?
The things that come with it organised.
It was about, Oh no, to be honest, I think it was only a few weeks, but it was really intense and it became we had these huddles.
So Mark initiated the huddles in the mornings.
So really what, what was when we recruited a patient, they went on to a schedule of taking their bloods.
So once we had them in recovery, they were randomised to the trial, so they'd be randomised either to normal care or medication.
And that was relatively easy because then you just get in touch with the team, arrange for the pharmacy, you know,
to be able to have that, that medicine added to the added to the drug schedule for the, for the patient.
And that was okay. It was done and dusted for us really. Septicaemia don't make mix.
So we were doing I think we had a schedule of almost every day.
I think we were taking bloods from those patients and we'd be going down and seeing those and remember these patients,
their veins were all very compromised because they'd been on ITU, people been poking around, didn't for how long.
And so we don't, we used to go in the morning to go and get the bloods from them and then we'd come back in the afternoon,
back to the BRC So BRC was like the hub for the task force.
So Mark was there all the time with his little band of merriment that sort of sat with would well will save my men majority of women, I think.
But we were there essentially like fielding and everything that went on.
And for us it almost became like a shelter because for me as well, it's where we kind of went back to it.
It became it. It was the hub from where we were to Mark was there, and Mark just had this town be this just sense of him.
We just seemed to be able to make light of things when we really, really needed it,
You know, when we were getting really, really when things started to get on top of us.
And then of course, they start. They just started turning away.
It was it was Kidlington. They started getting the food packages delivered to us, but they had but it wasn't Mark.
It was somebody else in the team that went out to come find it for us because nobody paid any attention to us being we search nurses, you know,
they were they were giving all these packages to people,
these food packages to people on the ward, and they were getting all the food delivered to them.
But nobody paid. Nobody knew anything about us. We were like just like this invisible team that just kind of just ran around.
So yeah, people worked in pairs. They went to the wards, they had different wards that they would go to and they'd be responsible for.
And we knew the relationship with the with the clinicians was going to be really important because as experienced research nurses,
we always knew that it's you,
it's the consultants that are talking to the patients that were going to put us in touch with the patients and tell us what you needed to do.
So they were kind of gatekeepers, I guess, in a way. So we knew we needed to develop those relationships with them and that's what we did.
And this. And then Mark would run a huddle.
Every morning we bring a huddle and we'd all talk in the morning about how things would fall out during the day.
And we had this big whiteboard where we had a schedule of patients and where they were and what plans we needed to get from them,
and things gradually became more organised, I think.
And then the point in Huddle was just sharing information.
Yeah, identifying problems, absolutely. Practice.
It was. Yes. Yeah. But it was really just for everybody together in the morning.
We knew what time we needed to be there and then we just said what we were doing and it wasn't.
It was very informal, very disorganised, no people sitting on floor, someone on desk or whatever,
you know, wherever you landed, basically because there wasn't space for all of us there.
At some point we must have started wearing masks, I don't know, but certainly not in the beginning.
And then and the experience even in the taskforce was different for some people because mine was quite acute.
But for others that were going along to the wards that were further out in the periphery,
they'd have fewer sick patients, you know, or they'd be better off.
And they would be and they would, they wouldn't be so bad because I think it was only running acutely.
The taskforce was only really for two months. April, May, I think it was disbanded early June.
All right. So it only really ran, but it was very, very intense for that period of time.
And towards the end it was all it started to become about data entry.
So all the information that we'd been gathering for, for rhetoric, which was the big data study,
I think that's still going on, is that we needed to start gathering that.
That information. We need to start uploading that. And with that data that was routinely collected anyway from patients.
And I'm trying to think, how did we have this information? No, I think it was questionnaires that were handed out.
Right. I think pretty sure it was questionnaires that were handed out and then given back to us.
But we'd also, because we all had access, of course, to patient notes, patient data, we would look, we check it out,
all using the using their minds, which is our hospital number, and we'd be able to have access to that there.
So we all had laptops and by that stage and then it started to come down in the last few weeks,
I remember because we expected it to go bonkers over Easter and I knew we were expecting that to be the high.
That was going to be our critical point. It never happened, actually.
We didn't get the numbers that we expected and we knew that wedding was having a really hard time and Birmingham was having a really hard time.
So we don't know what happened in Oxford, but it never seemed to be if you heard this before and never seemed to get quite as bad,
and it was for this, it was thought it was everything. I think a lot of people said that it got bad in the second peak in Oh yeah, yeah.
At that time. But that's that. Yeah. That was very different.
Yeah. That was very different with this for the second peak.
But, but this was the first, this is for far as my experience was concerned, it was those couple of months that was when it was most intense for me.
Yeah. And that's, that's when I got to know all this team really well.
And what was important about this hub was we got to know each other.
And when we talk about leadership and it was a really crucial part of my, my paper is that I saw what good looks like.
You know, we were really we all knew we all knew our jobs.
We knew we needed to do. And we kind of looked after each other and it was kind of it was just it wasn't even managing us, so to speak.
He was just enabling us to do what we needed to do. And that's what he was saying.
He said, I just needed to make sure that everybody knew what to do and you knew I could enable what did I
need to do in order to be able to let them do their job and to make sure people weren't afraid?
I think that was the thing. And I don't think I think things after the first couple of weeks.
So, you know, people that were really scared had an opportunity to come back because there were a lot of us there,
those of us that were involved were involved. People that didn't like the disorganisation tended to stand back a bit more.
And there was we tended we did find a groove, I think, and and we all got very close.
And then, of course, you know, we were able to support each other with questions.
I think nobody felt like anyone was better than the other,
because for all of us working in a big team like this, it felt really and felt really different.
And so I one of my friends is actually who was I was working with I was in the team before that I was working with.
She's now a qualitative researcher in the university and she was saying something like The similar research comes out of a disaster.
You know, disaster work when you get together, groups like that.
And I think that was probably that may have been what it was because it was very acute and it wasn't and it was like it was always like a yes,
but it was like but we were a team that were working together.
You know, we were looking after each other. And there was something really good about that feeling that we were looking after each other, I think so.
And we felt really useful and we knew that we were doing something for and the fact that we saw results of recovery,
I think it was very early on dexamethasone. We could see how effective that was.
And we knew and we knew that that was us pulling that stuff together, be able to make that happen.
And for research nurses because one of the biggest problems we have with research is that
projects will take so long and you lose contact with your recruits or your patients
that you don't know what the results of that research is that you are and you can't
disseminate it to your patients or the people that you've recruited to participants.
And whereas we could see what we were doing and how effective that was, and that was really crucial to all of us mentally, I think so, yeah.
But it, no, it disbanded in June and it quietened.
And then and I think I think we're beginning to quite get it quiet.
It had been such a profound experience for me. That's when I felt.
That. Okay. How are we going to how am I going to encapsulate this?
How am I going to come to this in a way that that people will be able to learn from this and take it forward?
Because we were a workforce that was really,
really important and we hadn't been up until suddenly we weren't given credit for the amount of work that,
you know, what we were what we were doing really well, how important we were to clinical teams.
So you decided to write about it? Yes, I well, more to write about it.
We were chatting,
I think it was one day I was I was with the we were with we knew that's what we were doing in the group and it was all beginning to die down.
And I said, we need we need to do a study on this, what we're going to do.
Yes, let's do about this. And so it was really simple.
It was just a question of doing a whole load of interviews.
It was. And with all the members of the team. Yeah. So for me, no, I did it on my own.
And yes, but I mean, the people you were interviewed with, the other interview with the team.
Yeah, exactly. How will we going to do this? And for me, I wanted to use grounded theory.
It was obvious because that was my master's. That's why I did that. And I thought, okay, so let's just do a series.
Well, what does that mean? What does grounded theory entail?
So, so grounded theory is a it's a method of research.
So of course, I keep thinking, view this research.
And I just told your dad and I said, now you know what grounded this?
But the point is, this isn't for me. Yes, of course.
Into this, of course, because I'm just trying to think, how am I going to put it really simply without going into it.
So, yeah, so it's it's it's, it's, it's a method for rigour in research gathering.
So I need to put it. And so for this it was a question of putting.
I gathered research, I got the some interviews for this,
In this case it was 15 and then I had to examine them for themes if I wanted
codes and categories and themes and eventually themes would come out to these,
to these. So it was very loose questions I would ask people.
And they took about half an hour, probably maybe maybe an hour.
And then essentially these themes came out from the interviews and that was what I was it was my piece with my article going to be about.
And I had these three areas and the things affected people the most.
I think we talked about the chaos in the beginning really, and how that was going to be.
And and we took that we call that question.
My things one. But the second one was leadership. And there was another thing I called it.
Well, actually, we use it in business. We use and business training was the comfort panic strategy model.
So and I applied this because I needed some way of trying to explain what happened to us.
And I thought, what can I use that would kind of explain what happened, how some people fell apart and when when when it started to get really tricky.
And yet some people seemed to rise to it.
And for most of us, our outlook changed because how we how we thought about ourselves is research has changed,
how we thought about what we wanted to do going forward changed.
And because we could, because suddenly we knew what good looks like.
We knew what working as a really high functioning team looked like, and we had a better idea of what we were capable of.
And I really wanted to find, and I still don't know if I could write the article all over again.
I don't know if it would ever fully be able to describe what I was trying to say about that.
It was really that whole some people didn't enjoy the chaos at all, didn't like not having the structure, and for some people they did.
So for we called the for most of us just working every day, it's we're in the comfort zone and that's where we function.
And then we can go into stretch and for some of us we might enjoy it more than others, but we will work a bit harder.
And actually when we're working a bit harder, we function better.
We can do more wellness, more more than we're thinking, but we're not learning is better.
And then it comes and then we go into a panic zone. If it could be too far and it can be too much, and for everybody, that's different.
But we need to be able to identify where that is.
And I think if I was to put myself in a leadership role now,
I think I would be looking for that in each person that I would be working with and trying to keep trying to understand.
Exactly. Yeah. And you can't make people do what they don't want to do and make it effective.
To be effective, they need to be working in a way that they're comfortable with.
They're happy but just stretched and just so far.
And that's a challenge in research because sometimes projects that last a long time that can get a bit boring winning for some.
So I think this is this is what I really wanted to be able to write down.
I don't know if I captured it in my article, but that's what I really wanted after that.
Then of course we were disbanded in June and I sort of dropped into I went into research governance,
so I then became kind of a nurse researcher, I guess, in a way, because I wasn't working, because our research was still there,
we still on hiatus, so there was nothing happening as far as my writing was going on.
So while we weren't, we weren't picked up in endoscopy yet, we were still that was still, but we didn't have the task force.
So I think to some extent the task is working a more on skeletal format.
So the DDT was still working, but those of us that came from what's in some ology or rheumatology or we started to go back
to our own areas at that point and some of those research projects might have been picked up.
Mine didn't particularly, but I was changed and I knew I wasn't going to go back to being able to do what I wanted to do,
what I was doing previous to that, that that wasn't going to satisfy me anymore.
But during that time, over that summer, I got involved really in writing the protocol for a study and then in the governance.
And bear in mind that I hadn't I was doing this literally on my own. We weren't allowed to see anybody face to face.
This this paper was going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards.
Kurek Which is the university for the equality to Yes, exactly.
In order to be able to put this protocol in a way that we'd be able to use because I decided that I wanted,
I wanted it to be a credible piece of work. So therefore I was going to go properly through ethics.
I wanted to go HRA and get and get local approval, whereas if I had recruited, apparently,
if I'd recruited outside of the trust and not used any of the trust facilities,
and actually because I was interviewing everybody online, I wasn't using any of the trust opportunities.
I could have just use WhatsApp or just used the team to recruit because actually that's essentially how it was.
But as it happened, I wanted a credible piece of work, so I wanted to go properly through ethics.
So the university helped me create a protocol. And then I got and I was signed off also by the head of the National Department of Medicine.
And that and then it was sponsored through the CTG, which is the research group of.
The university and the Trust and their great sponsor sponsored the study.
And then I needed to apply to the HIV Human Research Authority through the ICE platform, which is really clunky.
And suddenly I'm doing I'm doing research, really am the only senior research nurses who's got to do I'm doing stuff that nobody else can do.
You know, it was a it was a fabulous opportunity.
You know, this year as a research nurse, it was it was amazing, really, you know, because we could literally pick it up on just one minute.
We could have done whatever we wanted in the world was always tough.
And so I that and I'm so grateful to them.
And I don't know if it's because they because of course, everything was fast tracked as well.
Because it was but because it was a covered study. And then I started doing the interviews and Mark was really,
really helpful because basically he he sent out a mail shot to the whole team and asked people to come forward for.
And because I maybe because I got to know the team, obviously I was looking at it from an inside.
It was never expected very much so because I was part of the team and I need to make that very clear.
When I wrote the article, what the piece is that I was I was one of the team and these were people that were happy to talk to me,
and I was keen to make sure that I spoke to people that weren't happy as well because everyone knew I was right.
I was I was really excited by the whole thing. But they wanted I needed to be able to get a proper all over experience.
I needed to know about the people that didn't enjoy it, and it really was for them.
It was a lack of structure. What they didn't like, it was the whole panic.
It's what they didn't. Whereas some people like, enjoyed that and found that they could do what they wanted to do.
It's not me saying, okay, let me give them what they need. You know, and I enjoyed that.
And for the people that didn't. And and that's what I needed.
So I spent the summer and it took me ages.
It took so long. I was research governance, you know, it still took a long time.
And I did the research and then I wrote paper.
I was very, very lucky to be cut because Jen, who is in my previous team now qualitative research with primary health care and universities,
primary health care department, she she became my co-author.
But in in the way that she kind of just she gave me all the advice about who to speak to,
what to do and everything, because we weren't seeing each other again. We weren't seeing and we were in lockdown.
So we would so we were talking online and she kind of helped me pull that piece, pull that piece together.
And then. My my boss.
And I'm lucky because we we were friends anyway. Um, I was quite I was quite explicit with her and I said, I need to do something else now.
I can't I can't do this because things were starting to come back together.
Now, that was gastroenterology. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, but when I was working in endoscopy, so. Yes.
So I think things had gone a bit crazy then over the summer hadn't I know.
And there was that next peak that come along, but I was a bit, I was in my project by that stage really.
So I wasn't.
And I know that that Christmas it got really bad again because when I was interviewing, I was interviewing over November and December and those,
they were there were those people that were really, really they and the team really, really fed up actually.
And I knew people and of course,
people had got tired of lockdown at this stage and it was actually harder for people in hospital than it was in the beginning.
There wasn't the same uncertainty, but it was harder because people were doing more and because people fed up of it.
People haven't had the whole kind of uncertainty had gone and almost the excitement had gone out of it, really.
And then it was hitting people a lot harder. And we could see that the public were fatigued with all the lockdowns that they were going out.
And this was really frustrating the staff. And this was the kind of resentment building within the hospital at this stage.
The stage really, because we could see people just going out and not paying attention.
I put Facebook post, I remember saying, please stay home. Now, remember that New Year's Eve?
And when I saw my neighbours having a party, you know, and it was I mean, what could I do?
I mean, I didn't, but it was just like it was you could see this is where real separation happened.
Actually, it wasn't in the beginning because everybody was clapping for us and saying how great it was and then where in the trust.
And it's just like this is when it was getting really hard and everybody was getting really tired
and all these were being in a lot of the A&E staff were losing their annual leave and such,
and that was getting really, really tired.
And you could see that the public well, I just desperate to get back to normal and I didn't want to be locked down anymore.
Thank you very much. And of course, we'd had that kind of, um, was it like eat out to help out because we hadn't been helping at all as well.
And yeah, and it got, it was pretty, pretty hard then actually.
It was getting really difficult. And then at that time I moved.
That's when I moved jobs. I think it was When did I start?
And I applied. You had, what, three months notice?
So I started looking for jobs and I applied. But it wasn't until I didn't start.
Until. Until May. But because you have to work three months notice.
But that's when I joined the staff. The team, The immunology team that were following with Lizzy.
Right. So we were following the, um, that staff that had COVID.
Yeah. And then when the vaccines came in, we were following how the vaccine started work and that was, that was good fun.
And that was when there were three of us, really small, tight team working with that.
And I mean, I know Lizzy was working on outside of the taskforce, but they were working alongside us to some extent because,
I mean, taking our blood bags on you but well the transport bags anyway.
But, but yeah, I suppose so.
A lot happened for us really in that 18 months it was really busy, so I never felt like lockdown to me, really.
So no. And I used to you still in the in the immuno in immunology.
No, I know because COVID started to die down, I could feel it contracting kind of in a way.
The funds probably weren't going to be coming in for much research already.
I mean, I know that that study at the time was, um, it was certainly informing the government on their on vaccine strategy.
But I, but I knew and we knew when we joined, we joined up.
It was probably going to be our contracts for a year. Right. And I think I'd got, I think I had 18 months out of it.
And I thought that was that was quite generous, I think. Um, so what are you doing now?
So I decided then I was going to move on.
So now I'm working in cardiology with the acute Multidisciplinary Imaging and Intervention Centre and I'm lead research nurse over there,
cardiology, something completely different. And that's a promotion from where you.
It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a promotion, but I'm still not satisfied and that might be, I don't know.
I don't know what that two years did to me made me completely different.
I think, um, and I need, I need, I need another challenge.
I know. And I don't know if I'm happy yet. Still still got.
I've still got more to do. We've got a lot more to give, really. Now the kids have left her, but I thought, I can do more.
I'm not. I'm not. I've not got to be at home for them anymore.
So I don't get to do that. But we'll see. But it's onwards and upwards, as far as you're concerned.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think so.
So, I mean, you talked about this a little bit about feeling invincible, but, I mean,
was there any moment where you felt threatened by catching the virus yourself?
No, no, no. Have you had it? Yes, I did, actually.
But I didn't get it until July last year. Yeah. Yeah, that's about when I had it, I think.
Yeah, I know. We flew. We. I was on holiday.
I flew, we were in Italy and the.
And I hadn't had it all the way up until then and the whole team was saying,
we're going to have to start doing some research, we're going to have to study you to find out why you haven't had it.
Because I was well, there weren't that many people that had not. They said about 8% of the population of today.
And yes, I remember then I was feeling off what was the first holiday and I didn't know if I was just crashing.
Oh, it's just, you know, just tired like you often do when you can easily.
And I just couldn't sit still. I was just so achy, so sad, like, but I never I didn't think I didn't even really think about COVID.
It wasn't until we got home and we were away for two weeks and my husband got to shortly after me,
but he got but I didn't have any respiratory symptoms. He did.
And when I got home, um, of course we just staff test because I was in the privileged position to be able to get tested straightaway and we knew it.
So somebody came in, so we delivered and we knew then that.
I had I'd had COVID, I'd come into contact with COVID. So that must have been what it will mean because, you know, not any other time.
So, yeah, I but that was the only time I've had it that I know of.
But, you know, I felt I felt I was fit.
I didn't feel I was compromised. You know, I used to run and eat well.
And, you know, I think a nurse is on the whole we tend to we do tend to do that.
It comes as a bit of a shock. And really, those of us, I think, working in the thick of it, we do.
But um, and yeah, I know, I know colleagues that did get it and got really poorly and they've got long COVID since actually.
And those actually when they had COVID, it didn't really affect them but still have now known Cobalt since then, really.
So it's, it's difficult. But at the same time I wasn't afraid.
No, I can't say that's true. And your working hours with a crazy compared with what you would normally do.
But, um. Well, I know research.
You do 9 to 5 essentially. Really? In and. But that was quiet.
So. No, I don't think they were. Would they weren't.
Because the thing is, we could only work when the labs were open, you know.
Right. So we had to work alongside those so we could only really work for hours.
I did my spouse only say I didn't do anything over the summer part of my study.
That's not entirely true because of course, I helped out with the vaccine says no novavax was being developed.
I completely forgot about the Novavax was being developed over at the Churchill, so I joined in with that team.
They're doing those. And so that was a bit of shift work as well.
So we'd be doing them for the weekends and whatever. Just delivering the vaccine.
Just yeah, just doing the vaccine actually for them.
For me, I was on the I was on the team that was just literally just delivering because we were blinded.
Blinded? No, that study was no, we were the only, the only part of that team that wasn't blinded.
So we knew what we were giving to our patients, but we weren't part of anything else in the research budget that was for Novavax.
It was different for the Johnson and Johnson one, which was the Janssen trial that we were running in the community.
The other side is that. We were.
I was actually I was seeing the patients and I was blinded.
So I was being I was giving the vaccine, but I wasn't drawing it up.
That was being torn up by the the team of writers that did that and that was based over money.
So I was doing those weekends and working shifts and same time.
I'd completely forgotten about that. But yeah, no, it was quite busy.
That was quite busy. But yeah, yeah, no, no, the hours weren't really I think it was a mental toll.
It wasn't physical. Yes. Yeah. More than anything else. Yes.
Yes. But do you think that was the question?
First though, Alexis, what do you think the fact that you were working on something,
it was so important help to support your wellbeing through a difficult time.
Does it help support my work? Well, all I know is that I couldn't have stayed at home.
That would have driven me insane. My husband and I wouldn't.
I don't know if we we say this quite clearly to each other. He's introverted.
He's a lot quieter than me. And he was happy staying at home. I also had two teenagers at home.
And, uh. And for me.
It was a relief to be getting it.
To be honest, I think and, you know, in the weekends, I mean, I was still off at the weekend, so I mean, it was a beautiful summer and rightly so.
We were literally on Summertown right down there beside the beside the river.
So we had a a paddleboard and a I'd go to Selfs Kayak and we would go and lots and lots of people up and down the river and.
And yeah, there was a point when it was all quiet, I think, if I remember rightly.
But no, I don't. I never really worried about that, about my well-being, really.
I know people did and I worried for them, but not for me because I thought I was in a good place.
I was grateful. I was grateful for the opportunities I had. Really.
I think for us, it was a really good thing for research nurses.
So you talked a little bit about how it's changed the way you think about your your career.
Yeah, let's talk about that a bit more. I think I was just happy just trotting along.
I think I was thinking that I was just using my I was using my career.
I was working on five, you know, and always it was just kind of.
It was more or less supporting my. It wasn't as precious to me as it was now.
If that makes sense. I feel like I've gained a lot.
I get that experience is really, really important and it's.
And it's become, uh, more, more a greater part of my identity now, so that it's something that I don't want to lose.
I need to be able to build upon. And now, you know, I mean,
and what's more research in decline that struggling to even continue a lot of research projects now without without research nursing support.
So that's what this new the new accreditation for clinical research practitioners
has got ground and is gaining ground because research nurses are on the decline.
And I'm one of the, you know, a lot of my peers now retiring.
And so I am, you know,
there there are opportunities for someone because I with my experience and
I've got a friend research nurse who's a few years a few years older than me.
Her husband's only just retired and she was going to retire.
She's being persuaded not to retire now. She would be a great loss if we lost her because she knows anything and everything about research.
She's very, very experienced and, you know, and essentially she's working all the hours she wants to, which is very much 50% like, you know,
like she just works like three days, one week, four days and next or something along those lines because they they really need her.
And to lose her would be a great loss.
Really biggest problem is that, you know, the next few years we've got a lot of experience that we're going to lose really but.
Yeah, I think. But I've got I've got a way to go yet.
I'm only 50 this year and, you know, I mean, the way retirement goes now, I won't be working for another 15 years potentially.
But even so, even if 15 is stretching it, but certainly ten years when I've got loads to give in that time.
Really? So I don't know if I'm happy just to trundle along the next ten years not doing
anything because I've got I've got more to give now and I know what I can do,
what I'm capable of. And I know that, you know, working too hard is not going to break.
You know, I think that's that's really that's the biggest thing for me.
I think that's great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.