Mobilising a workforce to combat COVID-19: An account, reflections, and lessons learned

With the declaration of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic, intensive care units across the globe began to prepare for large numbers of patients. For many years, UK Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have been at high capacity, while facing staffing shortages. In order to prepare for the predicted increased work caring for large numbers with COVID-19, staff were redeployed from other clinical areas to help. Many of these staff had no previous ICU experience. In this article, we share our experiences redeploying medical staff from an extensive range of backgrounds, and how we utilised those staff to maximise use of their existing skills, together with reflections from a variety of redeployed staff members.