We have a team of clinical nurse specialists who work with children with asthma; Rachael Young, Laura King, and Andrew Farquharson (pictured, l-r). With them only starting their posts between June to October last year, they were just getting established when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

We sat down with them (the first time they’ve been physically together in weeks – more on that later!), to hear more about the unexpected realisations, and benefits for their patients, the pandemic brought:

 “When the pandemic first hit we expected it to be a big issue for our patients, due to the respiratory aspect. However, we’ve actually seen less of our patients. We think that’s actually a positive thing, that they’ve been following advice, staying home and taking their medication.

Of course, at the beginning we did get a lot of phone calls from concerned parents looking for advice, which was why we decided to contact over 400 patients to provide advice and support.

We were concerned that due to pandemic, our patients may have been frightened to come to hospital even if they really needed to – so we also wrote to them to ensure they understood they must come in if they were unwell, reassuring them of the measures that were in place to protect them.

For three months, we provided a seven-day service, rather than our usual Monday to Friday service, to ensure our patients were supported. And we continued to run our regular three clinics a week – we just moved them to over the phone.

While running a seven-day service, we also started following-up on children who had attended our Emergency Department. We found these were often not already known to us, so that’s been useful in finding other children we can help. A lot of this was done during weekend clinics and we plan to continue this as we found it so valuable.

As with lots of team during the peak, we were redeployed. We each spent time working on our children’s ward which, apart from for Rachael who previously worked there, was a bit challenging for us, as we’re used to only dealing with children with asthma. The team was really supportive though, and luckily, as there are three of us, there was always one of us to continue focusing on our asthma patients.

The digital revolution during the pandemic also meant we could take the opportunity to do lots of training – starting things we’d wanted do before but hadn’t the opportunity. It meant we could do it virtually!

We held training sessions with primary care colleagues across all three boroughs, training GPs, practice nurses and other partners in supporting children with asthma in the community.

We also started holding webinars with schools – two sessions for primary schools, one for secondary and one for just special schools across Barking and Dagenham, giving advice and answering questions with teachers and school nurses. This was really important as there were concerns about getting children with asthma back to school. The majority of them can go back, especially as we start to do more in the community, including rolling out the Asthma Friendly Schools initiative – which means every child with asthma must have their own plan.

As part of our preparation for schools going back in September, we also started a school newsletter, to provide further support and advice.

Again, using technology meant we were able to establish even better links with specialist centres, such as the Royal London, Brompton and Great Ormond Street hospitals, which also see some of our patients. We’ve introduced monthly virtual calls with them to discuss complex cases. It’s a great opportunity for us, and our consultants, to learn, ensuring we are giving families the best care possible.

The most interesting thing we learned was how useful virtual clinics can be, and that we don’t need to see the majority of our patients face-to-face. We also realised we don’t need to sit together to work well together – which is why this is only the third time we’ve been in the same room since the start of the pandemic!

While at the start we had concerns it would hamper our progress in establishing ourselves across the Trust and our community, it’s actually had the opposite effect.”

To find out more about what our team is up to, follow them on Twitter: @BHRUT_CYPAsthma.