I Saw a COVID-19 Patient Without PPE

It happened last week. I signed up for locum shifts in AMU during my annual leave to get out of the house (I live alone and couldn’t deal with a week of being in my flat, so thought I would help out in AMU over the weekend).

During one of my shifts, I was asked by a nurse to review a patient who wasn’t responsive – they had been admitted with reduced eating and drinking, which had worsened their Parkinson’s symptoms. I must stress that this patient had no respiratory symptoms – no cough or fever, so we were treating them for acute kidney injury caused by dehydration.

As a result of this, I examined this patient like I would any other patient without suspicion of COVID-19, so I wore no gloves, or apron or mask, and got quite close to them to do a full ABCDE assessment, then called my Consultant for help when I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. Like me, the Consultant also didn’t wear any PPE, and we re-examined the patient together, and came up with a management plan.

After the shift, I thought no more about it and had forgotten all about the patient, until I got a call from one of my F1 pals in AMU, who told me that the patient had been tested for COVID-19 and came back positive. My friend had called to let me know because she knew that there would be no contact tracing done, so wanted to make sure I was aware.

As you can imagine, this was quite unsettling news for me to hear. Since my AMU shifts, I had been in contact with many other patients, not to talk about my fellow colleagues on the ward, so I started freaking out about the possibility of me being an asymptomatic carrier and spreading it to people.

I called Occupational Health for advice, because surely I shouldn’t be working if I’ve been in contact with a confirmed case without protection, right? Wrong. They said that as long as I had no symptoms, hospital and government policy stated that I should keep going to work as normal. Yupp. I emphasised my concerns about being an asymptomatic carrier, but they said that patients and staff in “high risk areas” are current priorities for testing, so I should carry on as normal.

So here we are. A week on and I still have no symptoms, and I won’t be tested. Hospital PPE guidance has now changed though:

Long story short, we are now to see every patient wearing PPE, regardless of whether or not we’re suspecting COVID. In my opinion, we should have started doing this weeks ago, but atleast we’re there now. Here’s hoping I don’t develop symptoms…

Anyways, today’s good news? Shout out to Uber Eats for the free meals for NHS staff this week! I have definitely had too many takeaways, but at least I didn’t have to cook as much… ALSO, I had my end of rotation catch up with my clinical supervisor this week, and it went really well, so grateful to God for that, yay! 🙂