Coronavirus: Babysitting, food shopping, feeding pets – the students helping out their NHS colleagues

Medical students up and down the country are helping to relieve pressure on NHS staff fighting coronavirus, by babysitting, food shopping and feeding pets.

With nurseries and care facilities closing due to the spread of COVID-19, staff are often in need of childcare at the last minute, at anti-social hours.

Saif Khan, who is in his penultimate year of medicine at the University of Manchester, is one of those who decided he wanted to give something back to staff who have tutored and mentored him over the years.

He told Sky News: “We have had requests for, let’s say, two to three hours of babysitting. Something that is so easily done.

“We still have our learning to do from university, but with placements cancelled we have a lot more time available to us.

“So two to three hours to help out our colleagues is not too much to ask – and we are very glad and privileged to help them.”

The initiative is being run through an app called Bubble.

Key workers can search for students offering their time.

Each person has a profile, with reviews, experience and relevant checks.

Dr Anna Steele, a medical registrar at a London hospital, has three young girls and says having help from a medical student has been a lifesaver.

She said: “Unfortunately at the moment I am looking after a lot of patients with coronavirus.

“When I first heard about the school closure I was so worried because I didn’t know how I would balance my job with childcare for my three children.

“Then I heard about this wonderful initiative where medical students were coming to help with key worker families.

“My husband is at home, trying to do his normal job while homeschooling three children, with very different needs and ages. So having a little bit of intermittent help from the medical student has been an absolute lifesaver. I’m so grateful for the support.

“I think for families like mine or for key workers that are doing out of hours work or shift work or need emergency childcare cover, having medical students available to help us has been transformative.

“As you can imagine, work is fairly stressful at the moment so having this stress taken off our shoulders is a really big help.”

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Hundreds of medical students had started to come together spontaneously on social media across the country to offer their free time.

But it was Ari Last who decided to launch the initiative on an app to consolidate the service.

He told Sky News: “We have had requests where people need someone every Tuesday or Wednesday for two to three hours because they are running a clinic in the hospital or at home.

“And sometimes they’re called in on an emergency and they need to find someone so they can get to the hospital late at night.”

It is clearly a stressful time for NHS workers as unprecedented demand is placed on hospitals. But it is hoped that taking pressure off their personal lives will make things slightly easier.

(c) Sky News 2020: Coronavirus: Babysitting, food shopping, feeding pets – the students helping out their NHS colleagues