ISRRT_COVID-19_book

athroom to have a shower and wash my hair after every clinical shift. After showering I
would then put all my uniform in a separate high temperature wash to ensure a complete
decontamination. After about 6 months of this very routine, I decided that I would stop
washing my hair after every shift as it really was not having a good effect on my shiny curly
hair.
Mother’s Day 2020 22 nd March - It had finally arrived!
I worked Mothering Sunday and during the shift my mind kept wondering about what
provisions I needed to buy on the way home from work and I was beginning to become slightly
worried about the public stampede on buying every single toilet roll, packet of paracetamols
and tin of soup in the supermarkets. I really needed to go shopping as the fridge was empty
and with it being Mother’s Day I wanted something nice for my dinner.
In the UK there is an established role for the Advanced Radiographer Practitioner in providing
formal radiological reporting immediately whilst the patient is still in attendance in the
Emergency Department. This role is extremely successful and has been evidenced positively
on immediate diagnosis, reducing misinterpretations in the ED and impacting on the patient’s
management and treatment. This was a situation that required immediate reporting more
than ever in order to help the referring clinician on the findings on the X-ray but also in order
to speed up patients’ movement and discharge within the hospital.
I provided immediate reporting of all X-ray images referred from ED including chest images
on patients that were positive for COVID-19, I soon realised that this was invaluable in
assisting ED in deciding what to do with the increasing numbers of patients that required
chest imaging that were coming through the ED department. The appearances of COVID-19
on a chest X-ray was still a new and evolving finding but as a team of reporting radiographers
that provide immediate reporting of chest X-rays we had already researched the appearances
and in collaboration with the consultant Radiologists decided on an number of reporting
codes that we were going to use on these examinations to help with patient management
and treatment. We also devised an urgency COVID-19 reporting basket on our electronic
imaging archive system, EI which highlighted any patient that had had a mobile X-ray for
COVID-19 related chest pathology. On a daily / hourly basis we cleared this basket as a priority
so that the referrer would have a formal radiological report. An extra provision that we
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