Heart surgeon retrains as intensive care nurse to help COVID-19 fight

02:04

Surgeons across Britain have been left with time on their hands during the pandemic after cancelling operations to make space in intensive care for COVID-19 patients – but that doesn't mean they haven't been working.

Joel Dunning, a consultant heart and lung surgeon from Middlesbrough, decided to put his spare time to good use by retraining as an intensive care nurse at a local hospital as staff became overwhelmed with patients.

Dunning was required to undergo three training shifts before being allowed to start nursing duties but revealed he was thrown in at the deep end as increasing numbers of people were admitted to hospital after being struck down by the virus.

Joel Dunning normally operates on heart and lung patients but has retrained as an intensive care nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic. /Joel Dunning

He said: "On the third training shift they said 'we're very busy, can you take a patient? We'll be over there if you need us.' I was on it full-time after that, doing shifts in intensive care. It was a great environment, a brilliant team and we pulled together well to deal with this influx of intensive care patients."

Dunning spent two months working full-time on intensive care wards, during which time he worked alongside staff and community nurses, as well as those who had returned to the front line after coming out of retirement.

"The really gratifying thing over those two months was that I saw a huge flood of people coming in," he added. "I saw nurses from the community, out-patients, all sorts of places. Even our senior matron, who hadn't done nursing shifts for 10 years, came back to shifts.

Dunning has hailed nurses as the 'heroes of the pandemic' and praised their flexibility in learning new skills under enormous pressure. /Joel Dunning

"You needed more staff to deal with the situation because we were all wearing this difficult PPE. You have to get out of it every two hours because it's very stifling and we also had to quadruple the number of beds open to ventilated patients.

"It was an amazing team effort and the real heroes of this pandemic are the nurses, they've been so flexible. Doctors didn't pick up in droves to do nursing shifts but the nurses were no more knowledgeable about intensive care than I was. They didn't know about ventilators, syringe drivers, balloon pumps, all these complicated things, but they were so flexible and brilliant."

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