"Welcome to another week of Lockdown Diaries and after the success, I hope you all felt, that we had last week with our interview with Val, again I want to start this week with an interview. Here's somebody else from our community and what they've been doing and how things were going. I thought it would be particularly interesting if we could hear from one of our medical students who's been working at the hospital so I'd like to introduce Isa to you who's going to come on now and perhaps you just introduce yourself and tell us something about you."

"Hi there Stuart, thank you for having me. My name is Isa Hassan and I'm one of the medical students at Warwick which is a graduate entry programme. So, just a bit of a background about myself. I initially did an integrated master's degree at the University of East Anglia in biochemistry. Then I finished that and went to work in a pathology lab for two years with my eyes on sort of doing research. I quickly realised that research wasn't for me and so I then went on to want something that's more challenging for me personally and involved more patient care so I decided to join the Graduate Medicine at Warwick."

"Brilliant stuff and then we get ourselves into a pandemic and hospitals become tremendously busy and everyone's really focusing on, you know, NHS and what to do and you decide to go and help in the hospital."

"I did, yes. That decision wasn't taken easily. I had to think about it a lot just because I've seen everything that was going on the news but, you know, I chose to do a medical degree. I thought that's kind of what I've signed up for and what I was getting myself in for so I thought I would, you know, have to do something really to try and make more of an impact rather than just sitting at home."

"Tell us just a little bit about what it was like because, for those of us on the outside looking in, we could see tremendous pressure - people in tremendous pressure - and working different ways - all the PPE and all the rest of it - so how did it feel all going in and working in that kind of environment? How can you work in that kind of environment?"

"So, for me in particular, it was daunting going to the wards and going into that environment, particularly the unknown, but personally for me it was really - I got used to wearing the PPE and stuff very quickly. I got very used to it and it sort of became a very routine way of looking after the patient and sort of just going in daily and getting the job done. The PPE became very normal for me very quickly so then yeah, all I had to do was concentrate on what I was there for and that was helping the patients get through the sort of traumatic things they were going through."

"Did you feel you've learnt more for yourself, because it was in the middle of a pandemic, or less, as it were, because there were fewer people around to be able to say "don't do it like this, do it like that?"

"In a way, it was particularly with role - what I was doing - as a medical student support worker. It was more predominately a caring role which was something that I've never done before so that helped me tremendously in terms of, you know, in-depth or patient care and getting down to the nitty-gritty, as it were, and sort of being able to develop a relationship with a patient and become eventually a better doctor, that way, because of that. So, and on top of that - with the experience as well - it wasn't just a caring role. We also get to help the doctors out as well. Keeping our, sort of, clinical experience up so if the doctor needs any help with anything we're trained in such as: bloods, putting in cannulas or catheters or something like that."

"Too much information. *laughs*"

"Right, sorry. Not catheters *laughs*"

"And, last question. Last question, if I may? So, just tell us what was the best bit?"

"The best bit is definitely the relationships you build with a patient and definitely working with the colleagues because your going - you're all working towards the same goal through this sort of weird time. So, you really do starts to build a bond with the people in the hospital and on the ward."

"That's fantastic. During the end of the sort of height of it, the person who was the chair of the trust, Stella Manzie, she got in contact to say how much she and everybody near NHS locally wanted to thank people who - from the University - who done so much and you're one of those people so Stella would like to say thank you to you. I'd like to say thank you to you and all your colleagues. You've done such brilliant things through this extraordinary period and you'll be a brilliant doctor, we can all see that."

"Thank you, Stuart. Thank you, very much."

"Thanks, a lot. Thank you. Cheers.

I need to bring you up to date on a few other things that people are doing at the moment and quite a lot of continuity is coming through the messages you're telling me at the moment. Things are not back to normal but some things are slightly beginning to get back to normal, if that makes any sense. Forgive the bus going past. The Centre for Teacher Education have put forward their - they do this brilliant partnership schools conference every single year and they've done this online this year and Brilliant to see that, despite all the things going on, really important pieces of work like that can continue. It connects with hundreds of schools in our region and in fact beyond. And, let me give a shout out to some people who did some brilliant work to make sure that all worked in connecting with all the schools. That's Georgina and Abby and Alex and Gemma. Brilliant stuff. Thanks, ever so much, to all of you. I've had a few emails from people saying, you know, now we're in this phase of going back - those who view who are in the phase of going back. It was really interested to be back on on campus and Paul's one of those people was in touch to say it's quite nice going back to work. If I didn't say to you directly, Paul, what I meant to say is, don't say it too loudly because there's lots of us who can't go back yet who'd would quite like to go back. He points out also, you know, that in some other areas of the - some other sectors shall we say, there have been some real challenges as people have gone back to work, in terms of making sure that all the social distancing is really going to work so he was particularly pleased that we're taking it slowly and gently and making sure that a lot of the social distancing measures are in place. We're not, for those going back, moving yet to one metre, we're staying at two metres while we work out exactly, in practice, how things operate in buildings and so on. Another Paul. Paul wrote into us and sent some pictures of the Bridge View Light Railway. A miniature railway at Russells Garden Center and it's wonderful to see people back doing things that they're really in love doing. Building this miniature railway and yes, Paul, I do promise you, I will come and pay my pound and have my ride when it's open to the public again and we're able to do that. I can't now remember if it was last week or the week before, that I mentioned that the Student Opportunities team were looking for volunteers to do mentoring to help, in particular, some of our students without from wider participation backgrounds. To support them and what comes next and it's brilliant to hear that many of you have been volunteering. Fantastic, and if you want to do that, if you want to get in contact and volunteer, please contact samantha.merrix@warwick.ac.uk.

Several weeks ago, now, I think, I was telling you about the great word that Mohan and Karuna are doing in terms of creating reagents and materials that are really important in the in this fight against Covid-19 and they've been preparing and doing some of these this work, manufacturing this stuff to send to Africa and it's all gone now. Well, not all of it but the first batch is all gone out to five different countries which is absolutely fantastic to see. One little piece of disappointment though, also, it's quite good news. I said to you last week, that Mary had started - she'd been chosen to be part of the tests for the vaccine and what we were hoping to do is, she'll tell us how the journey was going on that road to the vaccine. The first stage of it having been chosen, was for her to go to Birmingham Hospital and to be tested to see if she'd had the wretched Covid-19. Because, of course, if you had it, you've got the antibodies you can't go through the vaccine test and, although she said that she'd had a bad cold, she didn't think she had had it but the bad cold was in fact, was Covid-19 so Mary has had it which means she can't carry on with the test which is a shame but, as I said to her, even though she's pretty gutted at not being able to go through with this, she's got antibodies so that's the upside for if - let's hope it doesn't happen - if we have a resurgence of this virus.

Do you know what? You've been sending me things. I've been talking to you now for 14 weeks and we are now at the end of the Summer Term. We started this back in March and here we are on the hottest days of the year and I'm sure it's true for you - where I am now, talking to you, I am absolutely roasting hot and I know it makes working from home - if you are in the working from home category - even more challenging. Even more difficult. After these 14 weeks, and now at the end of term, we've got some more things to be doing but slowly people will start to go on to leave and I thought what I might do is just slow this down. We won't do one next week. We'll do a community update in a couple of weeks. I know that some of you will be, as I say slowing down, saying "nothing's slowing down for me yet" but it will be the case I think over the next couple of weeks, as I say is people take leave. So, we won't do one next week but we'll do one the week after and see what kind of things are going on as hopefully we move through into the summer and things do start to get more back to normal for more people in our community. So, thanks for paying attention to this. Thanks for being involved. Please do keep sending me stuff. Isa, thanks for you, very much, for coming and telling us something about your experience. If you have things you want to share, please do do it but as I say I’ll speak to you all again in a couple of weeks.

Thanks very much."

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart Croft.