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With the world remaining in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of the football community continue to play their part in helping on the very frontline.

Two such unsung heroes are Portsmouth’s Rosie McDonnell, a nurse, and London Bees’ Hayley West, a physio, who recently shared their experiences of working on the frontline in hospitals with Suzy Wrack of The Guardian.

“It’s been an absolute baptism of fire,” says Portsmouth left-back Rosie, who qualified as a nurse in September 2019. “I was told it was going to be hard but I didn’t quite think we’d be in a pandemic.

“There’s a bit of a strange atmosphere at the hospital. People are adapting with every day that goes by; more plans come into place, different equipment, different strategies to try and manage the workload. It’s not horrendous at the moment where I am – I know that ICU [intensive care units] and high‑care areas are struggling a lot more – but there is a bit of a sense that we’re getting ready to deal with a bigger influx of patients, which is a little daunting. But credit to everyone I work with, no one has shied away from work.”

Defender Hayley, a sports therapist in her final year on a preregistration physiotherapy masters, recently completed the fifth of six placements at Whitechapel’s Royal London hospital.

While she waits for the outcome of talks between the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the professional council about graduating students early, she is picking up shifts as a rehab support worker with a community physiotherapy team.

Hayley saw big changes at the Royal London, as she explains: “There was training all over the place. You’ve got the intranet which is updated with Covid protocols every single day. There is an office which is open in the morning for staff members, in the afternoon for students only, and you can go there and ask them anything about Covid.

"The physiotherapy team is being brought together and split into two to cope with the changes.

“You just don’t know how many patients are going to end up having it or how many wards are going to be changed from, like, a trauma ward to a high-dependency unit. There’s no point in having the one physio on a trauma ward and all of a sudden they’ve got to deal with high-dependency patients.”

Both Rosie and Hayley have been humbled by the public support and now weekly Thursday night applause across the UK at 8pm for frontline workers.

Hayley adds: “I’ve had my eyes opened too about shop workers, lorry drivers and stuff. There’s a lot of: ‘Oh they only work in a shop. Oh they only stack shelves in Tesco.’ When you’re 16 and want a job it is: ‘Go and work in Tesco, that will be all right.’ Actually, it’s those people right now that are keeping the country going.

“They are risking themselves just so we can have food. [Then there are] the people that are volunteering; every family member helping out. It’s insane and great. I don’t know if you can really put the NHS on top of everyone else. The NHS might be saving lives but the shopworkers are too.”

To read the article in full please click here.

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