To recognise the unprecedented efforts of health and social care services across Tayside throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS Tayside has shared a video to thank staff who have worked tirelessly over the last two years.
NHS Tayside has created a video highlighting the many changes to services and departments that have been made over the past two years across Tayside. The video also pays tribute to staff across health and social care in hospitals and out in the community who have gone above and beyond despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chair of Tayside NHS Board, Lorna Birse-Stewart said, “Today we are marking two years of our response to COVID-19 and we should all use it as a time to look back and reflect on the amazing achievements we have delivered to the population of Tayside and also take time to remember how difficult and challenging it has been at times, both professionally and personally.
“The commitment and dedication shown by teams across hospitals, community care, GPs and volunteering has been extraordinary. The Team Tayside ethos of working together to find new ways of providing care, delivering solutions and innovating, be it through new services or equipment or treatment, has shone through.
“It is that determination to adapt and succeed that will see us through as we move towards the next phase of recovery.”
At the beginning of the pandemic NHS Tayside came together alongside health and social care colleagues to develop new pathways and new services, at incredibly short notice, to continue to care for patients. COVID-19 brought new ways of working, and within Ninewells Hospital clinicians created a hospital within a hospital ensuring that COVID and non-COVID patients could be cared for whilst keeping staff and patients safe.
Dr Pamela Johnston, Operational Medical Director said, “We have had to redesign the way we work many times as we respond to the challenges of COVID-19. At the very beginning we had to create a hospital within a hospital to deal with COVID, but also upscaled our critical care to four times normal capacity to deal with the increase of critical care patients.
“We have only managed to do all of this thanks to the exemplary and extraordinary staff we have here in NHS Tayside.”
NHS Tayside was the first health board in Scotland to begin a testing programme for symptomatic health and social care staff or their household members. Launched in March 2020, the COVID-19 Testing Team started testing frontline workers, including GPs, health and social care partnership staff, community and hospital pharmacists and other hospital workers as well as any symptomatic household contacts. This helped to continue the delivery of community services.
Dr David Shaw, Associate Medical Director for Primary Care said, “Two years ago under the rising threat of coronavirus, NHS Tayside opened five coronavirus assessment centres to ensure that patients could continue to access good clinical care during the pandemic.
“Thanks to vaccinations and new treatments we were able to close the community COVID centres in Angus and Perth in June 2020, and the Dundee centre was integrated within the already established Ninewells COVID assessment unit in February this year.
“The end of the COVID assessment centres does not mark the end of COVID. There is a continued need to pay attention to infection control measures and get vaccinated.”
In the continued fight against COVID, our vaccination teams have delivered 928,000 and have been part of the biggest vaccination programme in modern history. The programme gathered pace with the creation of a number of dedicated community vaccination centres across Tayside which allowed vaccination teams to deliver significantly higher numbers of vaccines.
More recently, NHS Tayside has been at the vanguard of the delivery of new antibody and antiviral treatments for those most at risk of developing severe disease. To date there have been 1615 referrals with 451people benefiting from the new treatments.
Dr Emma Fletcher, Director of Public Health, said, “I am incredibly grateful to the whole Public Health Directorate, wider NHS Tayside organisation and partner agencies who have flexed to support and contribute to the acute public health response. It really has been a whole Team Tayside effort!
“However none of this could have been possible without the support of the public. Without them playing their part in following the guidance, getting vaccinated when offered the jab and supporting each other and us, we would not have been able to reduce the impact of the pandemic as we have done over these past two years.”
The video can be viewed on NHS Tayside’s social media platforms and on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCEUVhPa9Ws