Teaching with the Nightingale faculty has been a unique experience. Stimulating, interesting, challenging and at times very tiring. Like many people when the Corona virus pandemic began, I wanted to do something to help. So when the email came around asking for volunteers to teach at the newly formed Nightingale facility I was pleased to volunteer.
I went up for induction to the Excel center on Saturday 4th April and by the afternoon I was teaching my first session with a colleague from another London HEI. Participants were streamed according to their qualifications and experience and instructed in the key aspects of caring for patients with Covid 19, such as airway management, basic life support, patient care, proning, communication, documentation and donning and doffing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).
Very quickly Standard Operating Procedures were developed to help everyone deliver approved content for a session more consistently as the groups rotated through the various skills stations. Having been involved in skills teaching on the pre-registration nursing curriculum, this was a familiar mode of teaching which I always enjoy, but now I was reaching back into my past to my adult ITU experience.
The faculty soon relocated to the O2 arena where social distancing could be more easily achieved while teaching. Unfortunately, I did go down with mild viral symptoms so had to isolate for a while but fortunately I recovered quickly at home.
Gemma Boden and Teresa McMahon also joined the teaching team and Heather Shekede joined the volunteer team one day marshaling participants. We all represented the University of Greenwich with lecturers from other London HEI's.
I found it inspiring working in a large multidisciplinary team, brought together in a short space of time, to deliver interprofessional training for a specific purpose. It was a privilege to prepare staff for their roles on the Nightingale ward and to form a small part of the larger Nightingale teaching faculty.
