There’s nothing quite like a pandemic to bring you all together...

Author: Joseph Wilson

Joe is a fourth year medical student who completed an FHS project and subsequently a Royal College of Radiologists undergraduate research fellowship in the Ester Hammond lab investigating ATR inhibitors.

Looking back now, the strangest aspect of the pandemic remains how fast everything ‘normal’ stopped. There had been whispers in January about this new virus that had taken hold in China, and it was slowly gaining traction in the media. By the end of February most had resigned themselves to the fact that there would be an outbreak in the UK, but to what extent remained unclear. On Friday 13th March, the Medical School informed us that there would be a two-week wind down period so we could wrap up our current placements. However, everything changed that weekend and come Monday lunchtime the game was up.

Joe Wilson

The overwhelming feeling that came next was wondering what, as medical students, could we do to help? Over the next couple of weeks, final year students were graduated early in order to become Junior Doctors, and a further 150 medical students were deployed across Oxford’s hospitals to help with the COVID workload. You’ll currently find medical students in all sorts of roles, ranging from the Emergency Department, to COVID clinical trials, to GP surgeries, pharmacies, to name just a few. Many others returned home to help out in their local communities and hospitals.

Currently, I spend my week testing hospital staff for COVID-19, and at the weekends I work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). On the testing front, this has led me to becoming public enemy number one in the hospital; trust me when I say that having a swab pushed almost half a foot back into your face via your nostril is not the highlight of your week. Despite this though, it is a price worth paying: the majority of those with COVID-19 will go asymptomatic yet can still potentially transmit the virus, therefore regularly testing staff has allowed us to limit any hospital-based transmission.

ICU is a completely different kettle of fish. Doctors, nurses, physios, radiographers and others head into the unit donned in a combination of an astronaut’s suit with the added bonus of a Darth Vader respirator strapped around their waist. They emerge two hours later looking like they’ve had the most intense sauna session of their lives.

Friends have said to me a lot recently that it must be so hard to see these patients on the unit as a result of the virus, but if I am to be brutally honest not a huge amount has changed. Pandemic or not, whatever the root cause of someone being admitted to ICU they always will have seen better days; the big difference currently is that these patients have all been subjected to the same virus. Once a patient is admitted to ICU as a result of COVID, they are likely to be in it for the long haul – we clapped one of the patients out the other day as she was discharged to the ward having been on the unit for over two months. Thankfully, the number of COVID patients on the unit is dwindling, but there is most definitely a sense of trepidation towards any potential second peak.

A curious aspect of the pandemic is that the atmosphere inside the hospital in no way matches that of the one outside of it; we’ve seen so much from journalists, social media, and politicians painting the pandemic as all-out war against the virus but the reality is much different.

A curious aspect of the pandemic is that the atmosphere inside the hospital in no way matches that of the one outside of it; we’ve seen so much from journalists, social media, and politicians painting the pandemic as all-out war against the virus but the reality is much different. The hospital is far quieter than before: there are no friends and families in the corridors or at the bedside visiting patients; the typical morning buzz down in theatres left when elective operations were put on hold; the emergency department has been virtually empty as the public do their best to stay away save what they consider to be the most dire of emergencies – for better or for worse.

Joe in PPE at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

These last three months have also highlighted the strength of the clinical research network here in Oxford encompassing the hospitals and the University, and the role that network plays in the wider world. Given that the world has been aware of SARS-CoV-2 for only six months, it is extraordinary that we have already established that dexamethasone can make such a difference in COVID mortality as part of the RECOVERY trial, and that we are already in phase III of a vaccine trial. On top of this, you really do have to pinch yourself that as students we have been given the opportunity to contribute to these efforts.

One of the handful of silver linings that I think will come out of the pandemic is that the relationship between medical students and the rest of the hospital has changed for good, and for the better. Prior to COVID, we were a group of busybodies that followed doctors around the hospitals incessantly asking questions and inevitably getting in the way. In my view, we now have much stronger relationships not just with the doctors, but with all members of the hospital team. Working in the face of adversity really does bring you all together.