Two months after the UK finally began to lock down, Year 2 ScotGEM students like myself have come to the end of our abridged teaching for the academic year. For second years, the final six weeks of the session were originally planned to be a smorgasbord of exciting teaching and hands-on clinical experiences in emergency and pre-hospital medicine in our chosen health boards. Personally, I was looking forward to returning to the Highlands to spend springtime in Inverness, getting stuck in and learning some new, practical and life-saving skills – and joining paramedics, mountain rescue teams or the air ambulance crew for a unique ScotGEM view into the amazing work that these highly skilled and highly trained people do every day.
Sadly, the pandemic put the lid on my excitement, with a premature end to face-to-face teaching announced (understandably) by the university and the removal of students from the clinical environment until the worst of the crisis had passed. As a result, ScotGEM programme staff really have pulled out all the stops to make the very best they can of the tail end of this academic year for both the existing cohorts – adapting all of our teaching for online delivery via Microsoft Teams, and deferring practical components to the next session. This meant a condensed final block of the year for us from six weeks to three, giving us more time to prepare for our upcoming summer assessment (delivered online, of course).
Today, as the discussions go on about quite how the various parts of the UK should go about lifting restrictions (and when), and in the midst of the highest death toll from the disease in Europe, it’s difficult to see what the eventual ‘new normal’ will look like.
I have been living back with parents now for around eight weeks, the longest continuous period I’ve spent here since leaving home to begin studies for my first degree ten years ago. I’m cherishing this unexpected extra time spent with my family, and consider myself very lucky to be spending my lockdown with them, unlike some I know who were separated from their families by international borders when they all began to close earlier in the year. Like everyone else, there are many people I miss spending time with – seeing their faces on screens and hearing their voices via speakers is of course no substitute for the real thing, and makes the last couple of months feel like a lot longer.
I’ve also always been a keen traveller, and feel it is healthy to have a change of scene every so often. While the lockdown has been great for hobbies and of course, for studies, spending all your time in or around the same building, or walking the same walk around the same surroundings runs the risk of becoming a bit stale. I also enjoy, and miss, driving – being a full-time student without regular employment and no medical reasons to travel hasn’t given me many valid opportunities to use my car in the past couple of months either.
A couple of weeks ago while clearing out some old paperwork I came across an information leaflet from the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, issued to me on some previous occasion where I had gone to donate blood. I have donated blood only a few times in my life, and was a bit put off on one previous occasion after a mild episode of vasovagal syncope (I fainted) resulting in me clattering my head off the historic wooden floor of Elphinstone Hall in Aberdeen (entirely my fault for turning up to donate slightly dehydrated with an empty stomach). I’ve learned my lesson since then, thankfully. The leaflet talked about the relatively new online system for booking appointments to donate blood across Scotland, and it occurred to me that this would be a great excuse for an essential journey into Ayr, my nearest town.
My blood type is AB rhesus D positive, one of the rarest going (just 2% of donors in the UK are AB+) and is known as the universal recipient type, since we’re lucky enough to be able to safely receive any blood type, should we need it. Of course, this means that demand for AB+ is at its lowest in a decade, and admittedly this has been another thing that has led me to be perhaps not as frequent a visitor as I could have been to the donor centre. Then again, stocks of fresh frozen plasma for AB+ people is generally only produced from male donors, since female donors (especially those who have been pregnant) can develop antibodies that, while no danger to themselves, can prove life threatening to patients transfused with their plasma. Plus, blood doesn’t keep very long so new donors are always in demand. The blood transfusion service in Scotland is arguably one of the most efficient and safest in the world, and aims to keep a stock of six days worth of blood of every type to ensure that Scottish hospitals always have what they need. Ultimately, I decided to book an appointment at a local donation session to be held at a church hall in Prestwick, next to Ayr.
When it came to donation day, I wasn’t sure what to expect. All the information from the transfusion service was telling me that every possible measure had been put in place at their donation sessions to ensure social distancing and safety for their staff and for donors. Still, other than the odd trip to the shops to get supplies, this would be the most I’d have mixed with others since lockdown began. I looked out an old facemask and took it with me.
It felt strange wilfully approaching a public building with cars parked outside, having been giving people outwith my household a wide berth for months. As soon as I arrived I could see that the two-metre rule was in force. Strips of tape showed people where to stand, and the member of staff (in full PPE) checking people in on the door ensured hand hygiene was carried out before anyone got a chance to touch anything. The theme carried on throughout – chairs in waiting areas and the cubicles where you chat to staff pre-donation, do your paperwork and get your blood iron levels checked were all spaced out and cordoned off appropriately. Everyone’s badges, bearing their name and photo, were prominently worn to give you a glimpse of who the person was behind the mask. The whole process was smooth and quick, the longest I waited was when I was having my obligatory pre-donation drink of 500ml water (a good backup for people like my past self) and before I knew it I was reclining on the donation bed, cannula in. I was pleased to see the room was busy, and yet everyone was consciously waiting before doorways and pinch points to keep their distance. Everyone I met seemed in great spirits and were as helpful and friendly as you could imagine.
Despite the complications of COVID, the whole thing from arrival to departure was done in well under an hour, and I enjoyed my post-donation blackcurrant squash and KitKat while thinking about how much harder it was to understand what people were saying when you can’t lip-read. Maybe the two-metre rule, wearing face coverings and disposable gloves in public and self-isolating at home when ill will now become a permanent feature of life – I certainly expect it will be part of the ‘new normal’ for us as medical students when we go back into the clinical environment in August.
Meanwhile, we’ll just have to wait and see, and do what we can to keep ourselves and others safe. If you’re safely able to then I wholly recommend signing up to make regular donations of blood or platelets. I’ll definitely be back in twelve weeks for my next session!
For information about blood donations in Scotland, visit scotblood.co.uk. For information relevant to England, visit blood.co.uk, and for Wales, it’s welsh-blood.org.uk.