Community nurses featured in moving Covid-19 art exhibition

Nicola Blundell (left) and Kitty Atkin (right).

A special exhibition at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery is telling the story of the experience of those in the NHS working through the COVID-19 pandemic – through portraits from local artists.

Artists from Stockport and surrounding areas have captured the portraits of staff who work at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Stepping Hill Hospital and community services across Stockport. 

These staff members, including District Nurse Nicola Blundell and Senior Nurse Practitioner, Kitty Atkin of the Trust’s Urgent Community Response Team, are a selection of the thousands who worked tirelessly through the COVID pandemic, and have told their stories in their own words.

Both clinical and non-clinical colleagues, and those working at the hospital and in the community are represented in the portraits, which include nursing staff, doctors, physiotherapists, domestics, and those working in procurement, pathology and the hospital mortuary.

The stories they tell give a very personal insight into the challenges and struggles which they and their colleagues faced at the height of the pandemic, and the terrible impact which the infection had on the lives of so many local people.

This project has been organised by Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and funded by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council as part of the COVID Community Commemoration Project, which is supporting Stockport communities to reflect on the period of the COVID pandemic.

Nic Firth, Chief Nurse for Stockport NHS Foundation Trust said “We’d like to give a huge thank you to all the artists who have done some incredible work here.

“It is extremely poignant and moving to see the portraits alongside the words of our colleagues who are represented by them.

“These were extremely hard times for all of us, and that certainly comes over in the stories. I would encourage everyone to come and see this exhibition, which offers a chance to reflect on one of the most turbulent times in modern NHS history.”

Councillor Frankie Singleton, Cabinet Member for Communities, Culture & Sport at Stockport Council, who has led the cross-party working group for the Covid Community Commemoration Project, said: “The exhibition will be a wonderful way to honour the work of all the staff who worked so hard during the pandemic to keep the NHS up and running.

“Everyone in our communities throughout Stockport really pulled together to help each other and show true neighbourliness during the pandemic and events like this and our other projects show how grateful we all are to everyone involved.”

The exhibition was launched with a special preview event on Thursday, March 7, and is now running at the gallery until Thursday, April 11. The artworks will then be returned to Stepping Hill Hospital for permanent display.

The exhibition is free to enter, and the gallery is open Thursday and Friday 1pm to 5pm, Saturday 10am to 5pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm.

Nicola Blundell, District nurse

Artist: Ian Dawber

Working in district nursing is a real privilege, we work with patients in care homes and their own homes. We often work with patients and their families over a long period of time, particularly for palliative care so can really get to know them.

For the first few months of covid things were the same as normal. Our PPE instructions were minimal, just masks, but as the situation across the country became more serious things changed.

For me it was difficult as I have underlying health conditions which require medications that lower my natural immunity and my GP advised that I should shield. I refused to lock myself away as I knew I would find that really hard, but during the first wave of the pandemic I agreed to work in the office co-ordinating the team so that I had less patient contact. That in itself was hard, as I love my job and meeting my patients.

We work closely with many of the care homes in our area and when the care homes started to have COVID they were really struggling. One resident would get it and then the rest would fall like dominoes. Often I would drop equipment and supplies off at the front door for them. I remember one time seeing a colleague who had been into one of the homes, and she came out sobbing. The care home had changed the way they did things so if there were residents who they knew were very ill and at the end of their lives, they would be moved to the ground floor rooms so that their relatives could see them through the windows as they died.

Once things started to open up after the first lock down, I returned to my clinical role. I was scared but wanted to get back to what I loved. As I was in a vulnerable group, I was one of the first people to be vaccinated so I had to trust the process and believe that the vaccine would protect me.

We were very reliant on our personal protective equipment (PPE), which we would put on over our uniforms before every house visit.  Working in the community means that you can’t get changed between visits so were allowed to wear uniform to and from work. However, one time during a busy shift, I was at a petrol station and a member of the public spat at me and called me a COVID spreader because he could see my uniform. It was so upsetting and in stark contrast to those clapping on their doorsteps or donating gifts. 

When I finished a visit, I would put my used PPE into an orange bag. If the patient was a confirmed COVID case, this would go into their bin, but if they didn’t have known COVID I would put the bag into my car for disposal later. But every action you take as a clinical person has an impact, and the impact of this was my fear of passing something on to my children, who often sit in my car.  My husband dubbed it ‘the COVID car’ and we agreed to use his car whenever we were out as a family.

The hardest thing was seeing patients who I had known for a long time struck down with the disease. Watching someone who was usually full of fun and life with fear in their eyes, not wanting to die, but knowing that they were going to was just terrible to watch. Whilst the pandemic seems like a life time ago now, I don’t think it’s something I or my team will ever forget.

Kitty Atkin, Senior nurse practitioner, Urgent Community Response Team

Artist:  Lindi Kirwin

I’ve been a senior nurse practitioner at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, working on the urgent community response team for the last six years.

Whilst the role didn’t change during COVID, our working practice and the sort of people we saw did. I think about COVID in phases, before, during and after.

From December 2019 and the emergence of the disease, it felt very different to previous pandemics such as swine flu where there was a lot of information and briefings, but this time we waited for information and instructions that never came. We were fit tested for masks in preparation for the pandemic, but then those masks weren’t available for us to use and it made me feel very cynical about it. As a group of professionals waiting to do their jobs, there was no way of understanding what it meant and what was out there.

From March we were puzzled – football matches and horse racing took place in the UK while the rest of the world shut down, it felt that there were mixed messages happening and I couldn’t understand what was going on. And then of course the impact of COVID hit before our restrictions came in.

There were lots of personal issues within the team – people who had children that suddenly needed to be home schooled, those with older relatives who were isolating but still needed to be cared for, or vulnerable colleagues who had health issues of their own.  Guidelines were changing regularly so we got into the habit of constant checking and researching, making sure pertinent information was shared. At times it felt like we were making it up as we went along but we were doing our best without information or resources. 

When the country finally locked down, we were grateful for that, however it dramatically changed our case load. Many of our patients are referred to us by social services or GPs but in the absence of face to face appointments in these areas, many patients weren’t being seen to then be referred on.  At first it meant our workload dropped a bit, but over time it picked up again.

Many of our patients tend to be frail and elderly, and we often need to spend time with them to do a full assessment, but we were having to minimise the length of time of our visits.

Sometimes we would arrive at a house to see one patient, but there might be three or four people living there, all really ill with COVID symptoms.  We could also see our patients struggling mentally too, scared of letting us in, or not respecting the restrictions we were under, so refusing to open windows when we got there despite having covid in the house.  This was unsettling for us as we also needed to protect ourselves.

What strikes me about the pandemic was the struggles that our patients were facing.  They were shielding so lost face to face contact with many of their loved ones which was very isolating. I remember one case where I visited an older patient who was with her daughter.  I could see that she was very unwell, not with COVID and in normal circumstances I would have referred her to hospital straight away.  This time I looked at her and had to wrestle with my conscience; if I sent her to hospital it could be the last time she ever saw her daughter, but if I didn’t she could become even more unwell. Dilemmas like this were becoming regular occurrences. Eventually I called the ambulance, but as soon as the doors shut and I was back in my car I cried at the decision I had had to make. I checked on her progress daily, and I’m relieved to say that the lady did survive, but it was very upsetting.

There is no normality post COVID. As a team we have supported each other well and have come out stronger in some ways but we have all experienced pain, trauma and moral injury.  In my personal life, through the pandemic six members of my family died, of COVID and not of COVID, everything we understood about grieving was changed. It hurts still.