Back to Practice with Covid-19

Well the pace did pick up albeit a little falteringly at the start of this week. There were some well-publicised issues with appointment letters which meant that Monday morning was eerily quiet while by late afternoon there were waits of up to an hour to get jabbed. Nevertheless everyone was seen and we saw numbers in the 7 and 8 hundreds at the start of the week although that did drop down to the 5 hundreds later in the week. It looks like we should see at least 5000 this week just as we hear the rather disappointing news that supplies are set to diminish over April. It’s a shame, as we are staffed and geared up to deliver some 6 to 7 thousand vaccination per week and throughout April we will presumably only deliver a fraction of that, I would guess with more of a focus on second vaccinations. Staffing wise it should be easy enough to cut back as about half of our staff at capacity are on bank contracts and there will be few bank hours available over April. The atmosphere at the hub...

Worked early and mid shifts on Wednesday and mid and late on Thursday this week. Wednesday was my first shift as acting Clinical Lead for the site. Challenge number one. Find the keys to open up. I knew where they should be kept but I was also aware that this location has already changed a few times...but hopefully not since I was last on. Challenge number two. Allocate available staff to vaccination booths and other tasks. This looked simple enough for the first four hours as there were only a few staff on. A few more started at 11:30 that also needed allocating. Thereafter I was really just a glorified gopher/runner weighed down by keys, mobile phones, responsibilities and a walkie talkie. I was basically there to answer practical, procedural or clinical queries and resolve or work around any issues that might arise. The first issue that di...

After nine days off I've returned to find we are now giving the Oxford AstraZeneca rather than the  Pfizer BioNTech vaccine at the QMU Vaccination Drive Through Centre. This does not involve any great change other than fewer potential cold chain issues, larger individual doses (0.5ml rather than 0.3ml), bigger vials (8mls or 10mls) and somewhat flimsier needles. The Pfizer BioNTech was drawn up and administered in a basically old style fashion with medium sized needles and pretty standard 1ml syringes which were fine for both purposes. The Oxford AstraZenica comes with larger 2ml syringes with a fixed small needle which is really rather flimsy when trying to get it through the little rubber bung of the vial. It’s also a little small for intramuscular injection use but I guess this is what we have been able to source in large enough quantities to deliver the vaccination programme. Over the last couple of days I have worked alongside a retired midwife, a former nurse who now works...