"We’ve all risen to this challenge and come out the other end stronger that we’ve ever imagined"
Megan Yeoman, a physiotherapist from the therapies team at Whipps Cross, worked throughout the pandemic and cared for lots of Covid-19 patients.
She only joined Barts Health about four months before the pandemic hit and her and her team went through a lot in a very short period of time.
Along with other Allied Health Professionals, occupational therapists, dieticians, speech and language specialists in her team, Megan cared for Covid-19 patients on a daily basis during the different peaks of the pandemic.
Hi Megan, tell us more about your experience of working with Covid-19 patients?
Physiotherapists have a huge role in regards to managing patient’s chests and obviously those who came with Covid-19 had a lot of chest problems so we cared for them very closely so they were able to breathe much easier.
As a team, we used to see Covid patients every single day. Additionally, we worked really closely with dieticians and speech and language specialists, and we also worked with different types of breathing machines, and once they got better we tried and do a bit of exercise with them, although quite a few of them were bed-bounded for three, four weeks so trying to get them back up was challenging.
How was it when the pandemic started?
It was a huge emotional rollercoaster, no one really expected. To start with a huge amount of fear within the hospital, fear from all the staff, but also fear from the patients -you could just see it on everyone’s eyes-. There was even fear when we first were taught how to do PPE and we went through a period of about two weeks of just being taught how to put it on and off.
How did you have to adapt your role and how do you feel about it?
As a therapy team, occupational therapists (OT) and physiotherapists, we adopted a huge trans-disciplinary approach, which meant that I would take on some roles from OTs and OTs did the same for physiotherapists. This was purely because everyone who came to the hospital needed a therapy input and we just didn’t have the capacity. This has been a good outcome of the whole experience, because I feel that I’m a much more rounded therapist after learning from the occupational side of things as well.
It’s been more cohesive between the entire multidisciplinary team, helped us create a stronger alliance between each other and a greater respect for each other’s roles.
I feel that doctors have also given us a new appreciation or respect about how much we manage patients chests. We’ve had more respect in our role in that sense, which is really nice.
From a personal perspective I feel that I’ve grown so much as a physiotherapist. What I’ve learnt in the past two years, it would have probably taken my five or 10 years to learn. My skillset has improved so much, I feel more competent.
How do you feel about having played a huge part in helping Covid-19 patients?
I feel proud, very proud. I’m proud of myself but also proud of my whole team. We displayed non-stop resilience and a lot of mental strength to get through the last two years.
As a therapy team, occupational therapists and physiotherapists, we became a very close team as a result.
Hopefully we won’t be able to go through this experience every again.
It’s been two years on since the pandemic started, how do you feel?
It’s still hard to comprehend what we’ve actually been going through and what we had to witness, I never want to witness again in my career or my life time, and we witnessed it in a very short time.
It’s hard to believe it’s been two years of Covid, the time has gone by quickly, although I remember each day been very slow and very long, trying to see whether my patients were improving or whether they were going the other way.
Our PPE also became a second skin to us.
The emotions like anxiety, fear and unknown that we had at the start, are still raw. We just came around to accepting what we had to witness.
We’ve all risen to this challenge and come out the other end stronger that we’ve ever imagined.