I've tweeted a fair bit about how hard covid was, so I thought I'd do some tweets on what worked well on the ground. I can't speak for anywhere else other than what I saw with my own two eyes, so here it is.

After reading about the UK experiences with exhaustion and learning that the longer you worked, the higher your risk of covid, our service mandated two weeks on, one week off to 'decontaminate' to make sure we a) didn't burn out too fast b) get infected and c) infect anyone else.

This worked really well - in our week 'off' we ended up using that time to help the coalface teams with calling families daily and keeping them updated. We couldn't really switch off from all that was going on, but we did get a rest while still helping out.

Food. I don't know who organised it but I am endlessly grateful. The kitchen stocked the fridges with sandwiches and water. Dinner boxes appeared. I can't tell you how dehydrated and hungry you get after rounding on 24 patients in full PPE. It reduced cross contamination too

Infection control came at the start of each handover and ran through PPE donning/doffing. There's been rumblings about people not 'doing it properly' and 'apathy', but the truth is, no one had ever been in a pandemic with a highly infectious disease before.

Ramping up the PPE when it became clear that it was spreading like fire. This was done in spite of self-serving and egotistical dogma. That sounds harsh of me, but when you're being told to see active covid patients in a surgical mask and everyone around you gets it...

@DanielAndrewsMP and @VictorianCHO daily pressers which were a lifeline for us. Our round would pause, everyone would stop and ask each other 'what are the numbers today, what are they saying'? We too were fielding endless questions we couldn't always answer.

Having offsite, 'virtual' registrars. Because we were rotating through so quickly (two weeks at a time), the 'virtual' registrars joined the ward round via ipad and knew the patients really well for us. They rang the families every day with updates and were the source of truth.

Updating the families daily. We came up with what we wanted to communicate and rang them daily, and didn't stop until the outcome was clear. Even though some days it was nearly too much to bear, and the conversations were always the same, we were glad we decided to do this.

The hospital asking us what we needed and listening. No one expected this to happen where it did and instead of digging their heels in (like they are so known to do), ultimately they listened and threw resources at

Small businesses making scrubs and scrub caps. Hand sanitiser. @DoctorDoctorBi pulling out all stops to get PPE into the country and to whoever needed it. The way the community banded together and did what needed to be done to drive this into the ground.

The nurses doing entire freaking shifts in PPE. I don't know how they did it. The residents tirelessly going in and out of the hot zones, risking themselves over and over to do cannulas, review patients, and hold hands.

And finally, staff debriefs. Some didn't know they needed it until after they'd done it. They. are. crucial. Even if you can't see the point, just organise them anyway. So many locked away feelings people didn't even know they'd had who felt better once they were out. The end