The Past Year (Drafted 22nd January, 2021)
(I thought I had posted about this some 2.5 years ago, but apparently not! It is a little self-serving praise, but I could do with some just now. It's also 1 of my 5 pieces of Reflective Accounts for Revalidation with the NMC.)
A few words about my involvement in the Covid pandemic.
In the past year, not only have I found myself a role in a new office that I enjoy, owning to the Covid-19 situation I was given a number of opportunities to prove my skills and adaptability in different settings:
Assisting in a helpline responding to staff enquiries about the Covid-19 situation with reference to board-wide guidelines specific to healthcare staff;
Taking part in setting up a staff well-being service in a district general hospital, and participating in providing peer support services to "frontline" NHS staff;
Participating in a follow-up process to engage with staff who were tested positive for Covid-19;
Participating in providing a phone based listening service for NHS and other health care workers;
And in my current role (at time of writing), co-ordinating the delivery of influenza vaccinations to vulnerable individuals who attend our CMHT, and also contributing to maximising immunity to Covid-19 within the local population.
The uncommon circumstances in my career prior to entering the pandemic had exposed me to the opportunities above, and I am grateful for the same. Whilst fully aware there is much for me still to learn about Nursing (and improving myself as a person), I long had confidence in my ability to adapt and the versatility to work in different challenging environments that had varying specifications under stress.
There are odd days when I think about if I wasn’t so far behind in my career, what more I could have taken part in, and I’d rather the pandemic didn’t happen at all, but I did manage to prove to myself the qualities I thought I had.
I’d like to think that the experiences have led me to become more pragmatic in my approach to Nursing, and certain other aspects of life. I’ve gotten more conscious of the impact that I could make with reference to quality improvement and leadership skills, and having more awareness about factors to be mindful of in the “setting up” phase of projects.
