A year of ‘outstanding care’ under immense pressure at Harrogate hospital

Today’s National Day of Reflection marks a year since the start of the first lockdown. Steve Russell, chief executive of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, writes for the Stray Ferret about how the trust has responded. 

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our first national lockdown. This past year has been such a challenge for everyone – not just in the NHS but across our all of our communities. It’s impacted on absolutely everyone in a way that so many of us have never before experienced.

Last week, we also marked the one-year anniversary of our first confirmed inpatient with coronavirus. It’s important we reflect on what our teams have pulled together to deliver since the pandemic began a year ago.

A year on, we have treated just over 800 patients who have suffered with covid. Of those, 600 people have been supported through kind and compassionate care and have been discharged home, but sadly 183 patients lost their lives in the pandemic at our hospitals.

Our community discharge team has supported over 4,500 discharges home during this time, providing the equivalent of 7,000 bed days in patients’ own homes.

Our district nursing services adapted and continued to provide outstanding care to patients in their own homes. They have carried out over 113,000 face-to-face contacts and our specialist care teams have added a further 5,000.

Our 0-19 services (health visiting and school nursing) also had to adapt their ways of working but have continued to support 102,000 children and pregnant mothers during this time. They adjusted the type of support they offer as well as trying to safeguard against increasing levels of risk, which lockdown tragically caused.

Read more:

I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of my colleagues across the trust and our partner organisations for their incredible efforts over the past year.

It now feels like an opportunity to look forward. Spring is officially here, the weather is getting warmer, more and more people are having the vaccine and we are easing out of lockdown. We can be really optimistic about getting back to something that more resembles ‘normal’.

That said, we can’t become complacent and we have to bear in mind that covid isn’t just going to disappear.

We will be living in a world where it exists but will be much more manageable. We already know so much more about it than we did at this point last year.

Please, keep following social distancing guidelines, wear a mask, wash your hands. If we’re all still doing this, it’s the quickest route back to doing the lovely things that we really want to do in life.

Column: A year that’s highlighted inequalities but also kindness and hope

Today marks a year since the start of the first lockdown and a National Day of Reflection.  The Bishop of Ripon, the Rt Rev’d Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, writes for the Stray Ferret and considers how hard the year has been but why she still has kept an abiding sense of hope. 

What were you doing a year ago today?  A glance at my diary on March 23, 2020 includes prominent use of the following words: ‘postponed’, ‘cancelled’, ‘Zoom’ and ‘evening prayer dial-in’.  Certainly a contrast to the diary appointments of the previous week.  On March 23rd 2020 we entered lockdown 1.

I am sure I am not the only one who never imagined that a year later we would still be in a lockdown, with 4.26 million people having been infected with COVID, and as of the time of writing, 125,516 tragically dead in the UK.  The specificity of that number is important, because each life matters.  It makes for grim reading, and the reality is that so many more lives have been impacted in ways that don’t make the headlines.  In recent days, the Stray Ferret has been featuring moving tributes to those who have died during the pandemic.  It is significant that not all of those lives were lost to the virus.  There are heartbreaking stories of people who have died without their loved ones at their side, with goodbyes said on the wavering screen of a tablet or smartphone.  And funeral services with limited loved ones present; that’s been so hard too.  We’ve had to get used to face-masks, distancing, and the words ‘you’re on mute’ have become rather over-used in my vocabulary.

I’m acutely aware of how local businesses have been impacted; incomes and long worked-for livelihoods decimated.  The road to recovery in that regard is a long and winding one.  On a personal note, I haven’t hugged my parents in over a year, and haven’t seen them face-to-face since October last year.  Their medical challenges and emergency hospital stays in the interim have been hard to navigate at a distance, and I’ve been grateful for the kindness of their neighbours who have kept an eye on them.  And I can’t forget the delivery drivers who have brought flowers and treats to their front door.  Perhaps it’s those little things I have learnt to appreciate all the more?  Perhaps it’s the realisation also of how much our lives are bound up with those of our neighbours?  And there’s the recognition of my own mortality, accompanied by the question ‘do I really need all this stuff around me?’  Maybe you have your own thoughts and experiences too?  One thing that has been persistent through all these wonderings and experiences however is an abiding hope.  This isn’t a naïve wishful musing; it’s grounded in my faith (hopefully you won’t be surprised to hear me say that).  A famous theologian is reputed to have once said: ‘even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree’.

During this past year, a light has been shone on many things, exposing raw inequalities in our communities and in society.  These cannot be ignored.  That light however has also illuminated kindness and compassion, and the many examples we have witnessed in that regard cannot be ignored either.  Hope is the bridge we have to get us into the next day, and the day after that.  Hope is the vaccine, the fruit of scientific endeavour and medical expertise.  One thing I am really sure of, is that despite our best efforts at times, we really are all in this together.  So much has changed this past year, yet I have been consistently amazed at the resilience of local communities.  For that I give thanks.  Strength is sometimes found in the most unlikely of places.  Now where’s that apple tree?  I need to go and get it planted!

Read More: