Heartbeat: View from the frontline

November 26, 2021

Working as RCP Chief Registrar at the Trust throughout the first two waves of COVID-19, Dr Vaishnavi Kumar – who has since rotated to work at UHB – recalls the challenges of the pandemic alongside the team spirit that kept her going.

She explained: “When the pandemic took hold and familiar routines changed beyond recognition, we had to adapt quickly to create new working practices that would keep us safe whilst we got on with treating and caring for our patients.

“My parents live in Leicester and having no other family of my own meant that I was able to form a bubble with them as they both work for the NHS (my father as an anaesthetist). Not having children myself to return to at home helped in a way to not feel worried about transmission after a shift looking after COVID patients. However, my grandparents – who I am very close to and used to visit most summers since my childhood – live in South India. Due to the pandemic, I was unable to travel to India to visit them. I unfortunately lost my grandfather earlier this year and again couldn’t attend his funeral as it was during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. It has been quite challenging emotionally not being able to see him before he died and spend time with my remaining grandparents as they get older. Some of my family members became very unwell with COVID-19 during the peak in India and the struggles they had to receive timely healthcare reminded me of how incredibly fortunate we are to have the NHS.”

After graduating from medical school and completing foundation and core medical training, Vaishnavi is currently undertaking her five-year higher specialty training to specialise as a doctor in diabetes and endocrinology and General Internal Medicine (GIM). During her placement as chief registrar at SWB, she worked across general medicine (as the medical registrar) and her own specialty during clinical time whilst she trained in leadership and management during her nonclinical time as the chief registrar.

Her medical registrar role meant she had the responsibility of coordinating a team to provide emergency medical care for patients, managing unwell patients out of hours, working closely with the on-call medical consultants to highlight any issues and decide what to do next for each patient.

During the pandemic, Vaishnavi saw huge numbers of patients suffering from COVID-19, as the clinics around her speciality were put on pause to cope with the vast number of admissions.

“We have all gone through different emotions with each wave. The first time around, it was a huge shock, and we were dealing with a lot of uncertainty. At the same time, we felt enthusiastic about tackling it – we felt like we were doing something heroic, and the public sentiment echoed that.

“All specialty training for junior doctors like myself was on hold, and I could no longer practice in my specialty. I had to focus on the pandemic alone, alongside my colleagues. The impact of the pandemic could mean that we won’t have doctors progressing through training at the expected rate and becoming consultants, if we continue to see training paused during each wave.

“It was concerning as I was seeing colleagues and doctors becoming unwell with COVID too. We’re a caring profession – and this is our calling – but it’s really challenging seeing people my age or younger than me becoming so unwell and having to go into intensive care. I once saw a 21-year-old, with no other health problems, who didn’t make it.”

When talking about the mental health impact on staff, Vaishnavi says: “Talking about it helps, and my colleagues and I talk a lot. It’s brought us closer together and we’ve had the chance to work with people we wouldn’t usually work with. But equally, some days you get home, and you just need to have a good cry after holding it together at work.

“We were really fortunate at SWB; as we were given lots of support both from NHS Charities Together and generally to help look after us. We had access to counselling and talking therapy, even anonymously. The wellbeing team is well signposted internally.”