"It was a privilege."
A South Gosforth nurse who has been providing cancer care to vulnerable people in their own homes has spoken about how she has "felt an enormous responsibility" to her patients throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Michelle Crawford, 55, works for LloydsPharmacy Clinical Homecare - in partnership with the North East's hospitals she travels to give people treatments for cancer, primarily breast cancer, in their homes.
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Speaking about the responsibility of being - at times - the only person a vulnerable patient was seeing during lockdown, Michelle said: "It was a privilege to be able to provide this service during these difficult times,
"I felt an enormous responsibility to make sure the patients I saw had their needs met. Not just in terms of their treatment, but their mental health needs as well."
Michelle's role involves administering immunotherapy to patients - and she said had found Covid-19 had changed their perspectives: As well as fighting cancer, they were scared of contracting the coronavirus too.
Michelle - who works in areas across Newcastle and the North, all the way to the Borders - said she was "incredibly proud" of her work.
She explained what she does: "As an oncology nurse, I give vital cancer treatments to the people of the North who have a cancer diagnosis. Patients are given targeted immunotherapies which are highly specialised treatments. They’re designed to block cancer growth, but they also use the body’s own immune system to target cancer cells.
"But patients aren’t just physically more vulnerable, they face more emotional and psychological challenges, too. Patients felt isolated, and the uncertainty of the virus frightened many. For one of my patients, I was the only person she’d seen in two years."
Michelle added that the "one-to-one, continuous relationship" with patients was vital, and she said "empowering" the people she was looking after was key.
"This was especially important when the pandemic left patients feeling vulnerable. It gave me an overwhelming sense of responsibility to make sure that I was keeping myself safe too, so that I could be there for my patients."
This week, Boris Johnson said the laws requiring people to self-isolate should they test positive for Covid-19 would be removed when the House of Commons returns from a recess on February 21.
This will form part of the Prime MInister's "living with Covid" strategy.
But the campaigners including people who are clinically vulnerable have said they were "left out" of discussions about this. One campaigner, Georgina Sait - who has a clinically vulnerable son - told the Mirror : ""I don't really understand how it's going to work, and it's quite concerning."
