Redesigning PPE: Enhancing the comfort and safety of healthcare workers wearing isolation gowns to treat patients with COVID-19

Case Study During the pandemic surveys of nursing staff highlighted issues relating to the poor comfort, fit and durability of oversized, isolation gowns. The rudimentary design and fabrication of this personal protective equipment (PPE) was the result of a crisis-managed situation whereby the PPE industry, including new companies, adopted an unsustainable, ‘non-circular’ approach to meet […]

Supporting healthcare professionals through Covid-19: Understanding how arts-based methods can support non-verbal communication

About the project The multidisciplinary research team involved in this project worked with performers to develop and deliver a programme of training and support for frontline NHS staff during the pandemic. A key focus of the work was on developing staff skills and confidence to communicate effectively when wearing PPE might have made this difficult. […]

Healthcare

Arts and Humanities researchers have highlighted the complex and difficult situations in which health and care staff have found themselves during the pandemic. Studies have developed tools to guide ethical and transparent decision-making and identify and assess risk in healthcare environments. Research and design skills have been applied to PPE, immunity passports and public-facing rapid […]

Nursing Narratives: Racism & the Pandemic

About the project Nursing Narratives has taken a ground level approach to understand the experiences of Black and Asian healthcare staff in the pandemic. Through surveying and interviewing workers, it has found that racism is prevalent in the health and social care sector, and structural racism impacted healthcare workers. A mix of social science and […]

NHS Voices of COVID-19

About the project This project extends from the NHS at 70 project, to investigate, identify, and document the impacts of the pandemic on healthcare workers and patients. It was based on over 2,000 interviews, recorded remotely by volunteers, of NHS staff, clinical leaders, policy makers and patients. For policy makers The project illuminates the lived […]

Skills and Training

Innovation and adaptation, including the move to digital, has been a feature of individual and organisational response to the pandemic across the arts and creative sector.  Arts and Humanities research exploring this has exposed a need for wide-ranging skills development and training in the cultural sector to support future inclusion and accessibility and to ensure […]

When Pandemic and Everyday Ethics Collide: Supporting Ethical Decision Making in Maternity Care and Paediatrics During the COVID-19 Pandemic

About the project This project focused on how the pandemic response created significant ethical issues for providers of non-COVID-19 services when deciding how to prioritise and reconfigure services in maternity care and paediatrics. It conducted a rapid review of policy making processes with decision makers, testing their ethics approaches, and examined their application in clinical […]

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The Digital Beyond. Has COVID-19 transformed digital memorialisation?

Dr Eleanor O’Keeffe worked as Post Doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC funded project British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19. Here, she discusses some of her research into digital adoption in response to the pandemic. Sequoia Nagamatsu’s 2022 novel How High We Go in the Dark, which was started before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, offers us […]

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Masking emotions & sterilising care: ‘reset’ ethics and the unintended consequences of COVID-19

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused far-reaching consequences for health systems worldwide. In responding to the pandemic, decision-makers have to balance competing interests and difficult trade-offs have to be made. We are told that Government guidance continues to ‘follow the science’, but such guidance must also be values-based. Transparency in the values that underpin those […]

Policy

These pages bring together policy implications and recommendations emerging from studies within the Pandemic and Beyond portfolio. Follow themed links below for more information about individual studies and to download short policy briefing papers and other resources. Where possible, this information will be updated as findings emerge. The projects appearing on these pages are those […]