Gareth Roberts, clinical lead for respiratory medicine, Wexham Park

Staff at Wexham Park saw their first coronavirus cases presented in the early days of the pandemic and, since March, more than 850 Covid-positive patients have been cared for at the hospital.

Gareth Roberts, the clinical lead for respiratory medicine and site lead for general medicine, has been recognised with a Values into Practice (ViP) Award for his outstanding contribution in response to the pandemic.

With clinical teams working around the clock to manage the unprecedented volume of very sick patients, his decisive leadership helped to steer them through the busiest time in the hospital’s history.

As a consultant physician, Gareth led the delivery of non-ITU care on the frontline, developing and adapting the treatment strategies throughout. One of the key changes he made was to completely redesign the team’s working patterns to provide a seven- day rolling rota with consultant delivery at its heart.

Gareth said: “While winning the VIP Award is a great honour, it was a massive team effort from a huge number of people that allowed us to get where we are. None of the changes would have been possible without the support of my respiratory consultant colleagues, the AMU lead Bethan Graf, the rest of the medicine directorate, the nursing teams from Wexham Park and the community, and all of the other therapists. In particular the AIR Team, lead by Joanne King, provided fantastic support to clinical areas and ongoing support for those discharged home.” 

“Everybody was able to work together and dramatically change their working practices to provide the right patient care through a very difficult and changing time. I think that’s been one of our biggest achievements during the last few months. The team was so very responsive and able to make significant changes with the minimum of fuss.”

In preparation for the high number of Covid patients, Gareth and the team completely reshaped the wards and reorganised the patient flow to protect non-Covid patients. At the same time, it was also critical to ensure the key outpatient services were still able to function effectively with very few face to face appointments.

Gareth explained that one of the many challenges was the rapidly evolving government guidance: "We were dealing with the unknown and keeping up with rapidly changing guidelines. It was a challenge to bridge the gap between the information that was coming into the organisation and then helping to provide frontline clinicians with the assurance that they were doing things correctly.”

Gareth’s team said he was a source of wisdom and leadership for the 12 weeks since the onset of the pandemic. Despite falling ill with Covid himself, he was a constant presence either in person or virtually. A true ViP Award winner for providing a continuity of leadership that is hard to better.