An NHS nurse on the front line of the UK’s coronavirus battle who made a viral appeal for people to stay home has performed a music video with colleagues to reinforce the message.
Mum Katey Murphy went viral with her message asking people to stay home after she was unable to spend Mother’s Day with her own mother or her 10-year-old daughter and was instead in the COVID-19 “war zone” for a gruelling 12-hour day.
The critical care nurse from Sunderland said she and her colleagues were worried all the time about infecting friends and families as well as themselves, but in the song posted online they made it clear that they would carry on despite the hardship.
She filmed the video together with colleagues at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria infirmary after listening to the words of Andra Day’s hit song Rise Up, and saying it really summed up everything they wanted to say.
Credit: CEN/@katey.murphy.56
The team kept some of the words and lyrics of the original song, but also modified it to get their message over about how they intended to carry on and will overcome the hardship for their patients. And at the end they conclude with the line: “And we’ll do it all again, for you.”
Dressed in their hospital scrubs, they dedicated it to the memory of a colleague who had lost his life to coronavirus after it was revealed earlier in the week that a third of UK NHS staff had been tested positive for the disease.
They nurse said it took three attempts to get all the clips that they needed. Katey said she came up with the idea after hearing the song on the radio after a long shift, and realised that it really summed up what they were having to deal with.
When she told the other nurses about it they all quickly agreed it was a great song, and when they recorded it and it was posted online, all the feedback they got was a great moral boost, she added.
She said: “I did not expect that, all we wanted was to boost the morale of medical workers.”
Writing on Facebook at the end of last month her message about staying home had also gone viral.
She wrote: “Yesterday morning I left my house at 06:30am to travel to the RVI Intensive Care Unit where I work as a Critical Care Nurse and I didn’t walk back through my front door till after 9pm.
“I never got to see or speak to my mam on Mother’s Day, I didn’t get to sit and watch movies all day with my beautiful 10 year old daughter or play games and paint pictures.
“Instead I was at work… somewhere I never thought I’d be… the frontline of an ever impending war zone.”
“I don’t want to be there, I’m scared, what if I bring this illness home to my beautiful, beautiful little girl or to my husband, the man who has loved and supported me for the last 17 years.
“What if I am one of the already growing young fit healthcare workers who ends up on a ventilator fighting for my own life.
“Again I don’t want to be there but… I WILL BE THERE, looking after the sickest of the sick people fighting for their lives against this awful disease.”
“Imagine feeling all of this then you finally get home 15 hours after you left that morning to sit down, pick up your phone, start scrolling Facebook and all you see are images, after images, after images of crowds of people gathered in parks and beaches, or complaining that sitting at home watching Netflix is just far to boring.
“You turn on the TV to see Boris is having to actually threaten to enforce a military lock down situation as people can literally not just sit down and stay in their homes for more than a day.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking for people like me who are unable to stay at home and who will continue to go to work and care for these people who could have actually stayed at home yesterday but didn’t … so contracted the virus, spread it to others and made sure this horrible pandemic will be longer and harder than it ever had to be.
“Please don’t think you’re special, please don’t think you are untouchable……. PLEASE JUST #STAYTHOME.”
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Story By: Ana Marjanovic, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
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