A STUDENT nurse on the frontline has spoken of the heartbreaking impact of coronavirus but says she would work for free to help people.

The University of Worcester’s Rosie Wilkinson is working at the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch. She was born in the same hospital and is working in the same department that her father trained in as she joins the frontline against the pandemic. Miss Wilkinson has already been working as a healthcare assistant at the hospital and has now been deployed there on a six-month paid placement to help in A&E. She started last Monday.

“It’s an opportunity to help,” said the 27-year-old, of Whitnash, near Leamington Spa. “When you see the people that are being properly affected by it, it’s heart-breaking.

“To be honest I would have done it for free. I didn’t choose to be a nurse for the money. I’m doing it because I wanted to help and look after people. I would feel much worse if I sat at home and didn’t go in.”

Miss Wilkinson has been combining online learning and support from the university with her healthcare assistant role, which includes sometimes acting as a runner to supply the intensive care unit so doctors and nurses do not have to continually remove their Personal Protective Equipment. Although she has not been directly caring for coronavirus patients, she told of the impact. She said: “What I have realised doing shifts as a healthcare assistant is that this is a different kind of illness we’re dealing with. When you have got somebody who is young, who is otherwise physically fit, who is being prepared to go on a ventilator and you see the look in their eyes as they’re going into the room and not knowing if they’re going to wake up, that’s what sticks with me. You see that this could be the last time they talk to somebody and actually they can’t see the person they’re talking to. Their family isn’t with them. That’s what I’m finding really hard. “

As a runner she has delivered belongings to family members after they have died which she said had been difficult.