Heartbeat: Book of memories comes together

November 16, 2020

As we move through the second wave of COVID-19, colleagues have been sharing their stories and memories of the first wave, when we braced ourselves for the unknown and turned to each other for support.

The stories are now being pulled together into a book of our memories and colleagues can share their stories for inclusion in the book. You do not have to be a writer – the comms team will work with you to produce your editorial. All you need to do is tell us you are interested in being part of the project. If you know of a colleague who would be keen to take part, you can nominate them and, we’ll do the rest. We plan for the book to be a lasting reminder of the year and a valued piece of our Trust history.

To give you a flavour of the content, here we read a snippet of Clinical Endoscopist Warren Chapman’s story as he recalls how he was torn when his son who had returned from a teaching role in Beijing started talking about returning to China.

He explained: “When I first became aware of COVID 19, last December I had a sense of relief; my son had been working as a teacher in Beijing but had recently come back to the UK. However, as we went into February, he started talking about returning to China. I was naturally worried, but then as COVID-19 seemed to be heading this way anyway, I encouraged him to return, which he did in early March. I think he made the right choice!”

Then after volunteering to move into critical care, Warren found a sense of camaraderie with his new work colleagues, as he explains: “I was impressed with the autonomy and skills of my ITU nursing colleagues and, I enjoyed finding out more about their roles. It was also good to talk with the other staff that had been redeployed and find out about their usual jobs. Of course, as I’ve worked in the Trust over so many years, I saw a lot of people I knew already and, it was good to renew old friendships.”

You’ll be able to read Warren’s full story next year on publication of the book, and if you’d like to join him in print as a lasting reminder of how we worked during the pandemic please contact Vanya Rogers, Head of External Communications, by email at vanya.rogers@nhs.net.