As we mark five years since the admission of our very first homeless patient into the Mildmay Step-Down Medical Care Pathway, our CEO Geoff Coleman reflects on the extraordinary challenges and heartwarming moments that shaped the early days of this service.
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when fear and uncertainty gripped London, Mildmay Hospital stepped up to provide essential care for some of the city's most vulnerable people. Geoff recalls the trials of those early months - supply shortages, personal sacrifices, and the unwavering spirit of community support that helped carry us through.
"As I look back to five years ago, I’m reminded of a time when my faith in human nature was truly restored. London was facing its first lockdown - a historic moment none of us could have foreseen. The city was gripped by fear and uncertainty, with everyone holding their breath, not knowing what the future would bring.
I had been in my role as Chief Executive of Mildmay Hospital for just nineteen months and the hospital was about to be tested in ways we couldn’t have imagined. NHS Commissioning had just asked us if the hospital would accept patients who were rough-sleeping and showing signs of COVID and needed to be isolated, alongside our existing cohort of patients. As a hospital with expertise in infectious diseases, we readily agreed and the hard work began in earnest.
It was not long before our first major challenge hit. The usual supply chains for PPE had been disrupted, and NHS Supplies were understandably prioritising front-line acute hospitals. I remember the Friday evening at the end of March when we had only a few hours until our supply of masks ran out, getting a phone call to say that if I could get to Whipps Cross Hospital in the next two hours there were two hundred boxes of masks waiting for us. I was just outside Bank Station, heading home, and I had to call an Uber XL to come and pick me up, head to Whips Cross, load up the boot and then return to Mildmay Hospital.
During that time, I would leave for work on Monday and return home on Friday. In the first week of April on a Wednesday evening, I got a call from my wife to say that two of the children had gone down with COVID-like symptoms. It took nearly four weeks to make it round the whole family, during which time I had to stay in London. I know that compared to some I was fortunate because there were others who could not go home for several months.
The next few months we walked a tightrope with PPE supplies and it took until the early summer for NHS Supplies to get the supply of PPE stabilised. Most modern hospitals work on a just-in-time basis and have very little storage space available, but the sheer volume of PPE required during the pandemic forced us to convert every spare room and storage space available into PPE storage.
Video conferencing became the norm with our Management Team not on site and I remember for a period having daily conference calls with Finance, HR, Marketing and Communications Teams off-site and myself with the Clinical, Cleaning, Estates and Facilities and Catering Teams on site. We would sit, socially distanced, around a group of tables in our conference room, surrounded by boxes of PPE.
The generosity of the local community was incredible to experience. Boxes of PPE were donated by various groups from across the East End of London, along with food and gifts for our patients. It was a time of incredible solidarity.
The City itself felt transformed. You could walk through the streets of London and hear birds singing in the trees. I remember on one occasion walking down the centre of the road from Shoreditch towards Liverpool Street Station and catching someone’s eye walking at the side of the road in the opposite direction. We both smiled and shrugged as if to say ‘who could ever have imagined this?’
People looked out for each other and took an interest in their neighbours and their communities and when the groups of people started coming out and banging their pots and pans in the streets around our hospital it brought tears to many of our eyes. People cared. Not just for themselves and their families, but for their communities.
So whilst this was without doubt one of the hardest times in my long career I truly believe that it restored in many of us a faith in human nature - of the kindness and generosity that still exists in the world - that over recent years had been severely dented."
Geoff Coleman
Mildmay Hospital CEO
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