Mary Seacole was voted the greatest ever Black Briton in 2004. Awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. Mary was an exemplary nurse who worked to tend to the sick in the Crimean War. As a role model to nurses she has pride of place in this the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. Her statue stands opposite the House of Commons, beside St Thomas’ Hospital where the Prime Minister is, we hope, recovering from COVID-19. This Trust is engaged in a huge mass mobilisation of effort and kindness both inside and outside our hospitals.

Our field hospital spans every ward and converts theatres into critical care units. We are having to adapt best practice to circumstance, demonstrate extraordinary resilience, speak truth to power, and challenge assumptions night after night. Given the scale of our operation we have chosen Mary as our figurehead in fighting this pandemic, conscious of the many colleagues on our staff drawn from different traditions, faiths, and communities. Mindful that COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting some local people. Mary’s bravery is part of her legacy to the profession.

It is perhaps important that everything we say and do is not about COVID. Or put differently everything is about COVID. To clarify – parents not taking their kids to ED is a COVID issue, delays in eye saving care are a COVID issue, isolation from hearing loss without access to a hearing aid likewise, making sure we tackle domestic violence is an issue that includes COVID, getting building work restarted on our sites is too. So everything is changed by COVID, and we need to talk about those things that get less of a mention.

We have focused this week on reorganising Cancer Services to make sure we can still provide the most curative treatments for tumours that march to their own time. In the next two weeks the Board will oversee construction of our post COVID Recovery Plan; starting to think not just about how we scale up to meet the need backlogged in our diagnostic and outpatient services, but also how we proactively search out disease and risk in people who have not been to see one of our GPs, or whose mental wellbeing has been rent by the tragedies of the current pandemic. I know it is too early to implement that plan, but it is definitely not too early to be preparing for it.

I continue to be overwhelmed by the incredible determination I see in teams across our organisation. This bank holiday weekend will never be repeated. Colleagues in driving shuttle buses on normal service. Estate staff in testing and retesting oxygen supply. Portering team leaders pulling extra night shifts. Senior managers manning the control centre, or even better doing the ‘management’ by walking about, that was my Heartbeat appeal. Nurses cancelling leave to help us properly staff wards or open critical care. So thank you to all involved in the Nightingale but let me be very clear. We are the first responders. This pandemic simply would overwhelm Perry Barr, Ladywood and Sandwell, if it was not for you and your efforts.

Sometimes though, as I have tried to convey in this week’s COVID Updates @SWBHnhs, the situation can feel overwhelming. Scale and effort, compassion and kindness, need to be matched by skill, innovation and precision. There’s a picture above of a constructed FIT testing mask, created by parts from a local supplier, made and validated overnight to help us keep testing. Don’t think bin bags – we are not having to make up kit that is unsafe. We are finding safe if unusual routes of supply.

Or remember Lawrence Barker and his team (and we will in the Star Awards in October) finding solutions to link ventilators from abroad to UK standard oxygen supply. I am not a clinician so you must never take clinical practice advice from me, but I attach the Proning Guidance now being used Trust-wide. Read it carefully and consider its applicability in your ward as well as across Intensive Care. There are things individuals are doin...