Marion Felix (TBS 2009) : Help during the Covid19 crisis without being from the medical profession

Marion Felix (TBS 2009) tells us how she has been able to help during this health crisis even though she doesn't have medical training.

In the first week after lockdown, I came across an announcement on a Facebook group by Aude Nyadanu, who works for AP-HP. She was looking to take on volunteers without a medical background who were prepared to provide voluntary help for the hospitals. After I filled in a quick questionnaire in word, I found myself on a Slack platform dedicated to the mission and the day after I turned up at the hospital Picpus to join a group of 20 volunteers to be trained in the recruitment process for back-up assistant nurses.

Today, over 19000 people have come together on the same Slack platform where many missions are posted according to each person's skills : help for recruiting assistant nurses, shooting video tutorials, meal delivery, modelling and data science, etc.

After just one month, our Assistant Nurse Recruitment Unit how includes a hundred people. Our role is to qualify candidates on the phone and to place the support nurses using the application «Renforts-Covid» to satisfy immediate demands from AP-HP hospitals:

• Detect students, doctors or even retired medical staff who have the capacity to fill in as nurses. We provide them with a revision course on nursing procedures prior to starting.
• Assign «nuggets» : nurses and assistant nurses specialized in resuscitation to the hospitals most saturated by Covid patients.
• Source nurses from other regions and organize their travel and accommodation so that they can start their missions as quickly as possible in Paris.

One of our best success stories to date : in one week we provided and trained one third of all staff to take up their functions in the new building for "resuscitation - theatre - RBI intervention" at the hospital Henri-Mondor in Créteil, which was only due to open 5 months later. Martin HIRSCH, Director of AP-HP, congratulated us for this feat. Right from the start of the crisis, he made a habit of sending an encouraging message by mail every day to his teams and made the effort to come and greet us in person. (cf. souvenir photo below).

This voluntary mission was timely to keep me busy during my week-ends and spare time. At the same time, I feel a sense of purpose towards the people on the front line during the crisis. This experience has taught me a great deal about an environment I knew nothing about and for which I felt some degree of trepidation.

At the end of the day, I exchange with people who are passionate about their jobs, whose commitment is total despite the seriousness of the situation and the very difficult conditions inside the hospitals. They share with me their doubts and fears as regards the danger to their families, but also to themselves (in particular, the older, retired people). The qualification process sometimes turns into a situation where the assistant nurses confide in us, seeking an attentive ear. They are no doubt more at ease with a stranger on the other end of the line. There is something extremely humain in all of this. 

In short I have rediscovered the pleasure of working at a distance with volunteers from all over and whose devotion, enthusiasm and energy give me my daily dose of positive vitamins ! 

So if you also want to make yourself useful and take part in this great adventure, go to http://volontaire.aphp.fr.

Assistant nurses are not the only ones who can commit to fighting the COVID 19 crisis