Nurse had to ‘freeze’ PPE during pandemic to re-use in care home, Covid inquiry hears

A former social care nurse has told the Covid-19 Inquiry that she wrote her final wishes on a card in case she died at work and was forced to freeze face masks to reuse in the future because of a scarcity of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic.

In an emotional testimony before the inquiry yesterday, Charlotte Hudd recalled how she was the ‘last nurse standing’ at the care home where she worked after the five other nurses who were employed there tested positive for Covid-19.

Ms Hudd was providing evidence for the inquiry’s examination of how the social care sector was affected during the pandemic: the final module in an inquiry that has lasted three years to date.

Ms Hudd recalled how she was forced to lock down in the home to care for 20 residents with complex needs on her own for 10 days in January 2021.

She worked alone to provide around the clock care, often only sleeping for 30 minutes at a time, sleeping in the empty room of a resident who had recently died.

Between the winter of 2020 and January 2021, the home lost almost half of its residents and two members of staff to Covid-19, the inquiry was told.

‘Like a solider on guard duty’

In her written evidence Ms Hudd said she felt like a ‘soldier on guard duty in the trenches’, often hearing residents crying in the night and shouting for help.

‘I realised I had to be strong and resilient for my residents, their loved ones and staff. They needed me to be present.

‘My emotions lurched from stomach to chest, and I tried to keep anxiety sealed in a lead-lined box secured by chains deep inside of me,’ she wrote.

In her testimony, she said that she and her colleagues had suffered moral distress because of the low staffing levels at the home.

She said they had feared not meeting patient’s needs and failing to meet the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Code of Conduct under the pressures of the pandemic.

Freezing PPE for future use

She described how PPE was so limited at a separate care home which was reliant on donations, that she and her colleagues had no choice but to make their own extra gowns from bed sheets and store the small number of masks they had in the freezer in an effort to sanitise them so they could be reused.

The former social care nurse described how, fearing for her own life, she had written her final wishes, including a Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) orders and including what she wanted to be dressed in for a funeral if she died.

Ms Hudd, who is still a registered nurse, now lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and long Covid following her experience during the pandemic.

The pressure of hospital discharges

This testimony came after former health and social care secretary Matt Hancock this week acknowledged to the inquiry that the decision made to discharge hospital patients into social care settings during the pandemic would ‘increase the pressure’ on an already overstretched social care workforce.

When asked by Jacqueline Carey KC, whether: ‘There is an acknowledgement by you that expedited discharges would increase the pressure on an already constrained workforce?’ Mr Hancock said: ‘Yes, that’s a reasonable way of putting it’.

He later described the level of protection available to the social care sector as ‘not as much as we would have liked’.

In opening submissions to the Inquiry this week, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the social care sector had been overlooked during the pandemic and warned that the workforce was not prepared for any similar outbreaks in the future.

It said: ‘This is not just a lesson to be learned but also a warning that with the current level of staffing, the number of vacancies and the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as long Covid, the UK Care Sector and its workers are struggling to meet the health and care needs of the population.

‘Inevitably, as matters currently stand, their ability to do so will be compromised in the event of a future pandemic.’

The RCN is warning that social care would be unprepared for a future pandemic, due to nursing shortages and vacancies in the sector and is calling for safety-critical nurse-to-patient ratios to be enshrined in law.

Speaking at a Covid-19 memorial event in May, the RCN chief executive and general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger warned that nursing is at risk of being seen as ‘expensive and dispensable’ after the pandemic.

In April, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned of worrying rises in infectious diseases since the pandemic, including those that can be prevented with vaccination.

Last year, data from Skills for Care revealed that the vacancy rate for social care nursing posts was 9% in 2023/24, down from 11.3% for 2022/23.