Hello, everyone. Welcome to my channel. My name is Maria, and on my channel,
I create videos around nursing and I also have a handful of,
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If you haven't done so already. In this video,
I'm going to be sharing some of the crazy things that I've changed at the
hospital since this coronavirus pandemic has started.
And the reason why I say that they are crazy is because if three,
four years ago, you would have told me that I have to do all of this stuff now,
or that all of these changes are going to happen in the hospital from 2020
onwards, I would have been like, why you lying?
But to think that a lot of these things are actually a reality,
it's just kind of, it's kind of mind blowing actually.
And when I think back and think about what I was doing as a nurse,
even just like a year and a half ago in comparison to what it is that you know,
I'm doing as a nurse now and how the working environment has changed is actually
quite crazy. It's actually quite mindblowing. Initially.
I was thinking that I would only share three, but as I was writing the list,
like it just kept going and going and going and going. But I do want to,
you know, quickly say that things are changing all the time.
Some of the things that I have mentioned in the video, they may change tomorrow.
Like I literally got an email at work.
Talk about one of the things that I'm going to mention,
and I'll explain it as the video goes on,
but take everything that I'm saying with a grain of salt,
in terms of fact that a lot of this will probably change in the
future. And it may not be the same, um, in the, um,
nursing environment or in the healthcare environment that you're working in.
Obviously it's not like a one size fits all policy. So don't think,
Oh my hospital, isn't doing that. Or my GP isn't doing that.
Or my chemist isn't doing that best believe that there is,
or I'm hoping that there is a valid reason as to why they are or why they are
not doing certain things.
I felt like this video would just be beneficial for anyone, for student nurses,
who are kind of nervous about their first day placement, for registered nurses
who have been out of practice, or just regular degular nurses like myself,
who literally just want to know.
What's changed.
Got my laptop here because I wrote some of them down.
So the first thing that I've noticed at my particular hospital is that we now
have security at every single entrance
And they're checking your name badges before you can enter the hospital.
Before we never had security like that.
At the main reception we would have porters.
And then at the entrance at the back, we never had any security.
You just swipe your badge.
And just walked straight through.
But now at every entrance we have security.
I know that that is simply down to the fact that we can't just have anyone and
everyone into the hospital.
The only time you can come into the hospital is if you're actually like a member
of staff working there,
or if you're a contractor and you actually have to do stuff in there,
gone are the days where, you know, someone could just come into the hospital,
go into the restaurant, get something to eat and leave. So no,
that is no longer happening. We have security at every single entrance,
making sure that you've got your name badge,
making sure that you're wearing your face mask and also making sure that you're
using a hand sanitizer before you enter the building.
Another thing that I've noticed that has changed,
and I don't think this is just limited to my hospital.
I think it's with every hospital, every healthcare facility, everywhere,
every building you go to, you have to wear a face mask.
You cannot enter the building. If you don't have a face mask.
And when I'm talking about face masks, I've got one in my bag, I mean,
like a simple face mask. So, um,
one thing that I do want to say is that if you have a face mask upon entrance
into the building,
you have to dispose of the face mask that you're wearing and you have to wear a
completely new one. So don't think that, Oh, I've got a face mask in my bag.
I can just pop that on and walk straight through. No,
you have to dispose of the one that you're already wearing.
And then you have to wear, um, a completely brand new face mask. And obviously,
depending on what part of the hospital,
that you're working with a simple face mask will not suffice.
If you're just in the restaurant, if you're just walking down a corridor,
then a simple face mask will work. However,
if you're working with patients with suspected COVID,
if you're working with patients who have confirmed COVID,
then a face mask will not do and you will have to switch over.
It depends what the PPE policy is,
but you will have to switch over to an FFP three face mask.
If you're working with patients who have a suspected COVID and then if you're
working with patients who have confirmed COVID, um,
or if they do an aerosol generating procedures,
then you do have the option of wearing one of these bigger face masks.
I don't know what they call it. Luckily,
I haven't been in a situation where I've had to wear one of these face masks or
where I've actually had to wear it in real life. But yeah,
you always have to have a face mask on,
and obviously you'll titrate the level of face mask up and down,
depending on, you know, obviously where you're working,
what it is that you're doing and all of that stuff,
make sure you check with your hospital or your healthcare facilities guidelines
on what you should be wearing. The next thing.
that has changed at my hospital is that we now have zones.
We have three zones, we have a green zone, which is completely safe.
We a hundred percent sure what, you're never a hundred percent sure,
but we're close to a hundred percent sure that the patient doesn't have COVID.
And then we have the Amber zone, which is suspected COVID. And then we have the, um,
the red zone, which is this patient has confirmed COVID. However, as of,
I believe yesterday, or the day before yesterday,
I received an email saying that from now on, we will no longer have three zones.
We won't have the green, the orange and the red, we are only going to,
or the green,
the Amber and the red Amber orange I use them interchangeably.
I got an email saying that we will no longer have the three zones.
We will only have two zones, which will be Amber and red.
And the reason for that is because sometimes there's been a couple of cases.
I'm sure it's not just at my hospital, but at other hospitals as well.
And other health care facilities where we have confirmed that the patient
doesn't have COVID and then they come into hospital or they're at a hospital for
like maybe, I don't know, one, two, three,
four days or weeks or months or whatever. And then down the line,
when we're doing our regular COVID checks on them,
we find out that actually before they didn't have COVID,
but now they do have COVID. And obviously if you're not checking them every day,
you don't know how long that the patient has had COVID without you knowing.
So yeah, rather than having the green zone the orange zone and the red zone,
we just have the orange and the red.
So even if a patient has had several COVID tests and they've all come back
as negative, we still have to treat the patient.
We still have to treat the patient as if they have suspected. Um, COVID,
which I think is actually a very fantastic idea. Um, yeah, I think that's a,
I think that's a great idea. That's a great step forward.
I do want to kind of mention as well at my hospital before anybody,
before any patients can come in,
whether they're being admitted from home or whether they're being transferred
from another hospital,
they have to have a COVID test that says they're negative.
They can't come and say, Oh, I had, okay. I have a test, you know,
five weeks ago. So now its negative. No, as far as I'm aware,
it could change up as everything is changing. But, um,
the COVID tests that they have has to, um,
Be... the last covid of test that is negative has,
how am I saying this?
The COVID test has to be negative and it has to have been within 72
hours. And if the patient is being admitted from home.
So if they're coming from home straight into the hospital,
they have to confirm that they have been shielding or isolating for at least two
weeks. So even if they've had a negative, um, COVID result, you know, yesterday,
but then they've said, you know, there've been Tescos,
they've been to the aunt's house. They've been to the cousin's house.
They haven't been following any guidelines. Then we will not,
or we will not admit them into the hospital.
Same with if a patient's being transferred from another hospital,
we have to confirm with the other hospital that they have had a negative COVID
swab in the past three days.
And as soon as the patient comes into the hospital, first thing is, hello.
My name is Maria I have to do a COVID swab. ASAP, we do that,
covid swab straight away, send it straight away to the lab,
and then we can get the results back from lab confirming that the patient is
still COVID negative, or if they are covid positive. And then so they have,
a covid swab before they come into the hospital, they'll have a covid swab
as soon as they get, before I offer you a cup of water,
best believe I've really done on COVID. Best believe we will have done a covid swab on you.
And then we also do a COVID swab on day three or admissions.
So the day you were admitted, counts as day zero, no, the day you were admitted,
counts as day one, we also do a COVID sort of on day three. And then, um,
we do a COVID saw every seven days.
And then obviously if in between that time, you start coughing,
you've got a temperature, then obviously we'll do a COVID swab. You know,
more often, those are just guidelines. You use, you know,
your practice to kind of decide how often you should do it.
If my patient had a COVID swab yesterday on day three of their admission,
and then next COVID swab isn't due for seven days.
If they've got a high temperature, if they're coughing,
if they just say they just, you know, generally feel unwell, then I will do, um,
another or not just me, but me or anybody else we'll do another COVID swab.
Another thing that has changed that has been the bane of my existence is
maintaining a two meter distance at hospital.
Like anybody who works in a hospital like anyone who works in a hospital
knows that it's literally impossible, almost impossible. No,
it is impossible to maintain a two meter distance,
a hundred percent of the time like this it's actually not possible.
Yes, we try our best, especially when it comes to like, you know,
having your breaks, having your lunches and stuff like that.
But it is impossible to maintain a two meter distance,
a hundred percent of the time at the hospital,
but there are measures in place that will help us. For example,
rooms that weren't previously opened for staff to have their breaks are now
open, obviously,
because we're not having any visitors where we would originally have visitors.
All of those rooms have now been opened up as staff rooms, as break rooms,
meaning that there are less people, you know, in the restaurant downstairs and,
you know, kind of people are spread around.
So there are measures in place to kind of help us to, you know,
maintain a two meter distance, but it's not 100% possible.
How do you take someone's blood pressure and maintain two meter distance,
how to take bloods and maintain a two meter distance.
How do you assist someone with a waah?
How do we give someone their medication and maintain a two meter distance?
So I hope you guys understand what I mean about is literally impossible to
always maintain the two distance, but there are things that we can, you know,
put in place to kind of help us to achieve, to achieve that.
Another thing that has changed at my hospital and
I'm sure it's changed at your hospital is that we have a strict policy of
no visitors. Absolutely no visitors at all.
You know, no visitors at all. Obviously it's not a one size fits all.
There are situations where, um, we have a lot of people in the hospital.
However, you don't just come in as a visitor right now,
we're treating you as a patient. So say, for example, if there's like,
I don't know, a 15 year old child,
or if there's like a i dont know a 30 year old person or whatever,
and a visitor what's the come in the visitor has to have a COVID swab the same
as the patient. Within the past 72 hours,
they have a COVID swab when they are in the hospital,
and they have to stay in the hospital for the duration of the say before,
if a visitor came, they could come, go to w Smith downstairs,
see the patient leave for a fag break for two hours, come back, you know,
go home, come back. You know, the next week now you can't do that.
If you're a visitor, you have to come in and you legit have to stay,
the moment you leave the hospital, you cannot, you cannot come back in.
Another thing that's changed is that rather than having six beds per Bay,
we only have four beds per Bay.
And that is obviously to help maintain the two meter distance.
And now when I go into the bays and I only see four beds, I'm like,
how on earth did we ever manage with literally six
patients in a Bay? Like, how did you manage the six patients in the Bay?
So now we only have four patients in a bay.
And that's probably one of the first things that patients always comment on when
they come into hospital that, Oh, there's not six beds in here.
There's only four. And I'm like, yeah, because you know,
we're trying to help everyone. Maintain a two meters distance.
I also want to add as well in terms of like bays only having four beds,
rather than six beds. That's at my hospital. At your hospital.
there may be you may have had four beds and it's still four beds because you can still
maintain a two meter distance.
That is one of the reasons why hospital beds or hospital bed numbers
have reduced dramatically at a handful of hospitals,
because let's just say before all their wards or all bays and all their bays,
or has six patients now, keeping in government guidelines,
they can literally only have a maximum of four patients per bay.
so that's one of the reasons why hospital bed numbers at some hospitals at some
trust may have dropped dramatically is because we can't have a hundred
percent of the beds that we used to have.
Another thing that's changed is that publicly funded patients and privately
funded patients are now mixed before this whole COVID pandemic thing started
at my hospital. We had a ward that was strictly for private patients.
And then, you know, every so often we would have, you know,
a private patient in a side room on one of the wards that generally catered to
publicly funded patients. But now since the corona virus,
everything has mixed the ward at my hospital that was originally for private
patients that just has like a mixture of privately and
publicly funded patients. Everything is now mixed it's. Um,
I think it's just mixtures because, you know,
before we could take six patients in a Bay,
now we can only say four patients in a day.
There's so many reasons to why it's all mixed, but it doesn't honestly,
it doesn't make a difference from what I'm doing in terms of publicly and
privately funded patients. It makes no difference whatsoever.
The only thing that I can kind of notice,
or that I noticed at the beginning was that some of the catering staff may have
had some,
a bit of problems trying to find who was publicly and who was privately funded
because at my hospital, obviously privately funded patients,
they're paying for their health care.
What they got to eat was a bit different from what, um,
the public funded patients got to eat. So rather than the catering staff,
knowing that all the private patients were on X ward, now they are mixed everywhere.
At first, I had a bit of difficulty, but honestly, for the most part,
as soon as they get in food, I don't think they care if their food is organic,
you know, picked by virgins on a full moon. I actually don't think they care.
As long as they've got food after their procedure, then, you know, everyone,
everyone is fine and no one's really complained.
No one has ever complained to me.
One final thing that I want to share with you that has changed.
That is like probably the most frustrating well it's not frustrating,
but as most, the most jarring thing that has changed,
I'm just like, really like really is the fact that, Oh guys,
like if I could roll my eyes a million times over, I would do that.
One thing that I've noticed that has changed since the COVID pandemic is that we
can now wear Crocs. I want to say crocs.
This is what I mean. Um, Crocs, these are not my work Crocs. I have two pairs.
These are the crops that I wear at home.
And then I have a pair of Crocs that just out work that I wear at work,
we can now wear Crocs before the COVID pandemic.
The only people that could wear Crocs were, um,
members of staff who worked in theaters. And I never understood.
I never understood the rationale for them.
I never understood the rationale for that.
I actually questioned someone about it and they said, it's because Crocs,
some of the crops have holes in them. And if you drop a needle,
it might get if my, you know, go for the hole and, you know,
stab you in the foot, which I can understand. But then I was like,
but not all crops have holes in them. Like these ones,
like there are special types of Crocs for healthcare staff that have absolutely
no holes in them. There was no reason.
And the reason why I always prefer the Crocs is one because they are very,
very comfortable and two, because they are so easy to clean,
literally at the start and the end of your shift.
And several times during your shift,
because I walk weird and my crops get messy, very quickly,
get some clinell wipes and wipe it with, you know, other pairs of nursing shoes.
It is not as easy to clean the shoes. And honestly,
from an infection control side,
I feel like crocs are the most hygienic footwear that you could wear.
So I can never understand why some hospitals,
not just the hospital that I'm at now, but other hospitals that I've been at,
I can never understand why some hospitals said that you couldn't wear Crocs.
You can only wear Crocs if you work in theaters. And I'm like,
not all Crocs have holes in them. And some Crocs, you know, they cover,
they cover your ankles. So, so what's the reason for it. But since the pandemic,
now we can wear Crocs, why can we wear Crocs?
Now we can wear Crocs now because I really don't know why we can wear crocs. Now.
There's no reason why there's, there's,
there's no reason that I can think of that's any different.
You can clean your Crocs now, just like you could clean them before.
But I think it's because, you know, so maybe, um,
people are more aware, and people are like,
actually crocs are really good because you can clean them.
Like you can clean them. You can clean them every second of your shift
and it's no issues.
I think that's probably why we can wear Crocs now to the point where at the
start of the pandemic, my hospital, I don't know who,
I don't know if it was my hospital or if it was like a charity or if it was just
someone who had a lot of money, they literally, at one point they were literally
giving out Crocs for everyone to wear, not just theatre staff.
So that's how I got my second pair of Crocs because someone or an organization
was kind enough thank you, thank you very much,
thank you very much was kind enough to, you know, donate,
give I'm not sure how they did it,
but give us basically Crocs that we could wear. But another thing,
our scrubs before at my hospital, we had to wear our uniform. Obviously,
unless you worked in theatres then you would wear your scrubs,
which I can understand why if you're in theater,
you really should be wearing scrubs. Anyway,
before you had to wear your uniform, if you worked on the wards, however,
in light of everything, that's happening now, we all, not that we all have to,
but now we all have the option of wearing scrubs,
which is great because it means that the last time I iron my uniform has been
months
It's great because I don't have to Pack my uniform to work in my opinion as well.
It is more hygienic. I go into work, pick a pair of scrubs,
put them on, do what I need to do. When I go home, take my scrubs off,
put them in the linen bin, come in for work The next shift.
And I know there's going to be a clean pair of scrubs for me to wear.
So that's another thing that has changed. So there we have it,
just some of the things that have changed at my hospital since the COVID
19 pandemic,
if anything else arises that I feel is worth mentioning,
then I will do another video about, you know,
X amount of things that have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like I said, I am trying to get to 10 k subscribers.
So I'd really appreciate it if you subscribed to my channel.
And if you gave this video and like, thank you guys so much for watching,
and I see you guys in my next video, bye.