Back in 2021 I conducted interviews with leaders who had led their teams through the pandemic. Their stories were extraordinary although at the time we were all still going through it and in some ways it felt ordinary. The reality was these leaders were just ordinary people forced to lead their teams through extraordinary times. Since then I have struggled to know what to do with these transcripts. Some of them I just posted on here straight. Others inspired me to write a longer story about the pandemic, which is still a work in progress. Now I have decided to take each interview and turn them into a short story with the help of AI to take those interview subscriptions and turn them into short stories. I have then played about with them to put back a bit of my style. When Everything Changed is the first one. If you were interviewed by me look out for your story.
I thought I knew exactly what kind of nurse I was for most of my career.
I was an oncology nurse. I understood my patients, my team, and my ward. There was comfort in the familiarity of it all. Then COVID arrived, and overnight everything changed.
The ward we all knew went from being an Cancer ward to a COVID ward more or less overnight. Suddenly, none of us knew what was coming next. Every day seemed to bring a new question and very few answers. We did not know how dangerous the virus was, whether our patients would survive, or whether we might take it home to our families.
I still remember the first patients arriving. Staff were dressed in full protective equipment, and the atmosphere was filled with uncertainty and fear. I was the Ward Sister, I felt responsible not only for delivering care but for looking after my team. When one of my nurses became ill with COVID, I genuinely worried that she might die. That feeling stayed with me for a long time.
Yet what stands out most when I look back is not the fear. It is the people.
During those difficult months, I saw ordinary people do extraordinary things. Members of my team stepped forward when they needed to. Some discovered strengths they never knew they had. Others found courage in situations none of us would ever have imagined facing.
There were moments of sadness, moments of exhaustion, and moments when we simply wondered how we would get through another shift. But there were also moments of laughter. Because the ward had fewer patients than usual, we found ourselves with something nurses rarely have: time to talk. Friendships grew stronger. We supported one another. We shared stories, worries and occasionally a much-needed joke.
In many ways, the pandemic stripped everyone back to who they really were.
I noticed that people’s values seemed to come to the surface. Some realised how important family was to them. Others discovered they wanted new challenges. Some found a renewed sense of purpose, while others recognised that their future might lie somewhere different. There was no right or wrong. People were simply finding out what mattered most.
The experience changed me too.
As the crisis began to ease, I found myself reflecting on my own future. For years, I had loved working on the ward, but COVID gave me something I had never really had before: time to think. It made me question what else might be possible.
At first, I felt guilty about leaving. But I had also seen my team grow. They no longer needed me in the same way they once had. In fact, me stepping aside created opportunities for others. A junior sister took on my role, and others progressed into new positions. Watching them succeed felt incredibly rewarding.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was the importance of talking.
For years I had benefited from coaching, supervision and having space to reflect. During the pandemic, those opportunities became even more important. I saw first-hand how much people needed a safe place to process what they had experienced. Whether through formal supervision or simply conversations with trusted colleagues, talking helped people make sense of events that often felt overwhelming.
What worried me was how many people still saw asking for help as a sign of weakness.
I saw it differently.
Asking for support is not about being unable to cope. It is about being professionally responsible. If we are caring for others, we need to care for ourselves too. The better we look after our own wellbeing, the better we are able to look after our patients, our colleagues and our families.
As we emerged from the pandemic, I found myself hoping for something simple.
Optimism.
Not blind optimism that ignores how difficult things have been, but optimism that helps us believe there is still something worthwhile ahead. COVID took a great deal from many people, but it did not take away our ability to grow, learn or dream about the future.
If there is one thing I would offer others, it is compassion.
The pandemic taught us that everyone carries a story we know very little about. Every person has their own struggles, worries and ways of coping. It became all too easy to judge people for the choices they made, but often we had no idea what was happening behind closed doors.
We were all trying to get through in the best way we could.
Looking back now, I do not think the pandemic simply changed healthcare. I think it revealed people. It showed us our values, our strengths and our vulnerabilities. It showed us what mattered.
And despite everything we lost, I believe it also showed us just how resilient we can be.
Connected Coaching 