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Nurses are often organising , managing their own practices , and setting up clinics and services , as well as vaccinating
UNP negotiating obstacles such as the need to store the Pfizer vaccine at around -70 degrees Celsius , and early limitations on supply . And it found sites to deliver the jabs , from village halls to the more grand venue of Salisbury Cathedral . ‘ It was a pretty astonishing and intense period ,’ Mr Radford recalls .
Primary care nurses have been key to getting the country vaccinated as fast as possible , he stresses . ‘ From the outset , we absolutely understood that primary care would be delivering the bulk of vaccinations . They do this year in , year out – and the nurses are often organising , managing their own practices , and setting up clinics and services , as well as vaccinating . I ’ ve always been really clear on public platforms and social media about recognising the nursing contribution alongside physiotherapists , for example , scientists , doctors and others as part of that work .’
But how did it feel to be at the centre of such rapid changes ? ‘ I ’ ll be honest in that , without a doubt , this has professionally been one of the toughest parts of my career ,’ says Mr Radford . ‘ My job changed enormously pretty much overnight with whatever the pandemic threw at us , so I ’ ve had to be dynamic around dealing with different types of problems and changes to the team .
‘ The demands of work and the physical amount of work to do has just been enormous – but so has the drive to improve and get things better for people out there working in clinical practice , and for our students .’
Students ’ central role in Covid response ‘ All the time I was working on the national vaccine programme , I was still connected back into HEE supporting my nursing team , because much of what we were still doing was really quite critical , notably in the support of students ,’ continues Mr Radford , who was previously chief nursing officer at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire
Summer 2021 nursinginpractice . com