“THE patients were shocked – the snow was so bad they didn’t expect to see anyone on Sunday.
“For many their carers hadn’t been able to get through so we made them their breakfast or gave them a hot drink as well as their treatment and made sure they were comfortable.”
That’s how Redditch district nurse Emma Hendrick saw a day which could have left many isolated patients without vital insulin or other medication if the nurses had not got out to see them.
Much of the credit for that lies with Emma’s brother-in-law Russell Causer, who takes up the tale…
“Emma had said she was dreading driving in snow,” said Russell, from Webheath.
“I’ve got a Ford Ranger truck and she sort of mentioned it to me and so I said I would take her.”
Russell, a married father of two, duly turned up at Emma’s front door at 7.30am and with four nurses onboard made 25 calls on patients while another district nurse, at the wheel of a Land Rover Discovery, tended to the rest.
“The main roads were pretty decent towards midday once the snowploughs had been out but they couldn’t get down the closes where many cars were either parked on both sides of the road or had been ditched,” said Russell, an electrician with Atlas Electrical UK.
Emma, who works for Worcestershire Health & Care Trust and was the nurse in charge on Sunday, said of Russell: “I think it just came naturally to him and it’s amazing how everyone came together with staff making it in from as far away as Rubery and Worcester.
“One of the nurses wasn’t even on duty but still came in and after we’d all finished it was still snowing. But it’s what we do as district nurses, we will always get to our patients.”
