Working in the Royal Surrey County Hospital during these trying times has definitely been something I never imagined I would live to do.

I am currently working as a healthcare assistant at the local hospital, where my job role consists of helping out the nurses and is heavily focused on tending to patients’ mental and physical needs. I work on the various hospital wards but also in the A&E department, alongside an amazing set of staff.

Working on the NHS frontline

During these times and by working on the frontline I have come to realise how important every single person’s job working in the NHS is – from cleaners, to porters, to nurses, to doctors – everyone has a role to play. Working in the NHS in general is admirable, and especially during these difficult times it is important that the young, fit and healthy take a step forward to help our community, our vulnerable and our elderly.

Healthcare experience for my future career

Additionally, this job has provided me with so much experience in the medical field which is invaluable to my future career as I will be going into Physician Associate studies in September. Understanding, asking questions and then applying my knowledge has been an important part of this role. It has made me more compassionate, understanding and patient as well as adding a lot of useful medical information into the academic part of my brain. I have grown as a person and also a medical professional, and all of that only within the 4 months since I’ve started this job. There is so much more learning to come from this.

Now, working in a hospital during a global pandemic is quite the experience. Rules and regulation are extremely tight i.e. every single person has to wear masks within the hospital areas – no matter where you are, social distancing is taken into consideration therefore within a bay of 6 beds only 4 patients are allowed and the most difficult of all are visitation limitations. Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed within the hospital to visit their loved ones which makes it extremely hard for our patients. However, as a trust we are trying our best to keep our patients in contact with their families and we organise daily video calls for each and every patient with their families and friends.

Take home message

We will get through this and we will come out stronger, but until this is all over we have to stick together as a nation and minimise the risk as well as providing as much help where we can.