Nurses working in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic made personal protective equipment (PPE) out of bin bags and bedsheets, and stored facemasks in freezer bags due to shortages, an inquiry has heard.
Former registered nurse and reverend Charlotte Hudd last week gave evidence at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, in which she recalled how her care home battled during the height of the pandemic.
“We just had to make do with what we did, so that’s what we did”
Charlotte Hudd
It came as module six of the inquiry began last week, which is focusing on social care.
In an emotional testimony, Ms Hudd described being the “last nurse standing” at the care home where she worked, after five other nurses who were employed there tested positive for the virus.
The inquiry heard how, in January 2021, the former social care nurse was forced to lock down at her care home, being left to care for 20 residents with complex needs on her own for 10 days.
Ms Rudd said she felt “panic and fear rising” in the days leading up to this, as more of her nursing colleagues became sick with the virus.
“Every time I readjusted the rota, it just disintegrated,” she said.
“Then came the realisation [that] there’s no more nurses left. It’s just me.”
When running the home by herself, Ms Rudd said she was at the “forefront of moral distress” listening to patients cry out or shout because they were confused or alone.
The inquiry heard how the former nurse slept in a deceased resident’s room and was only able to take “little naps” in 30-minute intervals so she could be on call.
Fearing for her safety, Ms Rudd also wrote her final wishes on a card, including a do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) order and what she wanted to be dressed in if she died.
Counsel to the inquiry, Natasha Shotunde, pressed Ms Rudd on how her care home coped with the changes to government guidance that came in during the pandemic, including around PPE.
Ms Rudd described the guidance coming out “quickly” and that often the care home “couldn’t keep up”.
“We couldn’t [get] our hands on materials, masks and things, as effectively as we wanted to,” she said.
“We were all quite creative in trying to source products by other means.”
Nurses and other staff at the care home made aprons out of bedsheets, describing how “bin bags only go so far”.
“We made things that could be washed,” Ms Rudd explained.
Similarly, nurses tried to preserve the masks they were wearing as PPE as they were in such short supply.
Ms Rudd said: “When mask wearing was mandatory continuously, as it should [have been] at that time, we didn’t have enough products.
“We had little self-sealed Tesco bags that you put your lunch in, so we’d have the same mask and then we’d put that into our little bag, seal it, have our lunch and then put it back on.
“We just had to make do with what we did, so that’s what we did.”
In the opening submissions to the social care module, the Royal College of Nursing said the experiences of nurses working in the care sector were dangerously overlooked during the pandemic.
The college described how social care nurses had “unequal access” to both resources and workforce, leading to an “unfair perception” that it was second to acute hospital care.
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