News from the School
Thanks to Kate Stubbs, Marketing and Communications Manager CCHS, for the following updates.
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Breanna Blackboro progressed from CCHSG to study medicine at Birmingham Medical School in 2018. She has completed 2 years of her medical training and during the height of the pandemic she was working in ITU as a health care assistant at Basildon Hospital, looking after COVID-19 patients. Breanna originally undertook work experience at Basildon Hospital while at CCHSG.
When she left CCHSG in 2018, she was awarded the annual Catherine Bullen Foundation Prize which commemorates CCHSG alumna Catherine, who tragically died from illness while on a student medical placement in Namibia. It is presented by Catherine’s parents to a CCHSG student going onto a career within healthcare. Breanna’s account of her first shift in ITU, which she has given us permission to share, proves what a very worthy recipient of the prize she was.
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I also spent an hour talking to a sedated patient and stopped her clawing at her tube. She was Portuguese so didn’t know what I was saying, but seemed soothed by my words. It’s a really odd sensation to be talking to patients that cannot respond to you, but I think it’s so important to treat them as though they can - otherwise you lose a sense of humanity in the situation.
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I keep being asked why I’m an HCA if I’m wanting to be a doctor. I for one couldn’t be more grateful to be having this experience. I’ve now got such an admiration for the HCAs, nurses and the shifts and responsibilities they each have. I like to think that even once I’m fully qualified, I’ll remember my HCA days with fondness. Their job is equally if not more valuable than that of a doctor and one that in my opinion, if done properly and with love, can have far more of an impact than any number of prescriptions, diagnoses and therapies.
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My First ICU Shift: “Wow! I’m honestly awestruck at how the regular ITU staff manage 12 hour shifts in full PPE without turning into dehydrated, achy and miserable prunes. The conditions are as tough as the news presents them: for once it’s not all dramatised. Yet in the difficulty of the environment, there is such a sense of camaraderie and everyone working for the good of those patients and their families who are left in the darkness of Covid-19. As an Health Care Assistant, my role was predominantly management of equipment stocks and patient cleaning. Thank goodness for the body suits and gloves. I thought I’d find this challenging to deal with, but it actually ended up being a really rewarding job and the team had good humour, throughout.
A highlight was being able to extubate a patient as they made progress and no longer needed their ventilator. My role was to release a syringe to decompress the balloon that held the ventilation tube in the trachea, to pull the tube out and to quickly secure an oxygen mask in place afterwards. As the man gripped my hand with relief I could have cried.