A nurse who trained on the Covid front line in Nottingham has described how mentally draining it was - and how it was an "insult" to learn that No 10 staff had allegedly partied while medics and patients stuck to the rules.
Rhys Smedley, 28, from Long Eaton, now works at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, the same hospital where he trained as a student.
From the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Rhys worked on the T-31 surgical admission ward as a student of Nottingham Trent University.
READ MORE: Get the latest Queen's Medical Centre stories from Nottinghamshire Live
Rhys has now spoken out about his time on the front line as Nottingham Trent University opens a new Health and Allied Professions Centre on the Clifton campus.
At university, Rhys was a student on the nursing associate programme which required him to work as a nurse.
The newly-opened centre, on the university's Clifton campus, serves as a base for the Institute of Health and Allied Professions, which offers a range of specialist courses such as adult, mental health and learning disabilities nursing, paramedic science and public health.
Rhys spoke about the difficulties he endured, especially during the first wave of the pandemic, and said: “When I was working on the front line, it was challenging, it was a good being part of it, I was a part of a good team but it was mentally draining.
"At times, there were staffing issues, people isolating and the volume of patients was high. Having to wear the additional PPE was hard especially during the first wave, that summer, it was really hot.
“Sometimes, I’d just get in my car after a shift and I’d just sit there and reflect on what had happened. To get up and do it again the next morning, it’s difficult.
“We had a few palliative care patients on the ward who I’ll always remember and that was special, looking after them for the last few days of their life.”
Numerous parties were allegedly held at No 10 while the rest of the country faced restrictions, and Sue Gray's report said that some social gatherings were "difficult to justify".
Rhys shared his thoughts on those in power who are alleged to have broken the rules, and said: “How I look at it is if the nurses had done that [broken restrictions] they’d lose their jobs and lose their contracts, so I’m not sure how the people at the top of the country can do that.
“I think it’s an insult to NHS staff and families that have lost people through the pandemic. I will say that the Government has been good with the vaccine roll-out but there’s no excuse for what some did.
"We’ve all had to make sacrifices.”
During lockdown, there was a dispute over students working on the front line for free, especially during a pandemic.
Rhys shared his views on this and said: “They should have been paid, they’re always on wards. Without them the wards would have been chaos, they deserved a reward for it.
“It’s definitely made me a lot more resilient, I cope with things better. There’s still Covid cases, you just have to learn to manage it, it’s the new normal and we just have to adapt.”
After speaking of how hard it was to study without any face-to-face support, Rhys said how rewarding it was to have graduated.
He said: “To have graduated normally would have been something I couldn’t have imagined when leaving school but to be graduating now, through the pandemic, is such a proud feeling and I’ve amazed myself with how I’ve developed into a nurse associate.”
Jackie Brocklehurst, regional deputy head of nursing and midwifery at Health Education England, said: “I would like to formally congratulate these students, whose resilience has been second to none.
"They haven’t experienced a practice setting without Covid. The role of nursing associate is relatively new to the nursing family, and we have barely scratched the surface of what it can achieve.”
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