Staff Vaccination Programme commences in Mid-West hospital
Staff Nurse Rosaline O’Brien this Monday morning became the first healthcare professional in the Mid-West to receive a vaccine against Covid-19.
Rosaline, a County Limerick native who has worked in University Hospital Limerick for 40 years, and as a Triage Nurse in the hospital’s Emergency Department for the past 27 years, said the arrival of the first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was hugely encouraging for frontline healthcare workers, who have been challenged as never before throughout the 10 long months of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
“I’m working in the ED for 27 years, and I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to get the vaccine. I really wanted to get it, because I think it’s very important to take the vaccine, especially as a healthcare worker. It’s a pandemic, and not just something you can dismiss. It’s been very tough since March. It’s not easy, and it affects everybody all over the hospital. It’s very serious, and I think the only way is to get the vaccine, and move on."
Administering the vaccine to Rosaline this morning was intensive care consultant Dr Catherine Motherway, who added: “After the weekend, the beginning of 2021, which seemed to be full of doom and gloom, we are now starting to vaccinate locally in Limerick. We’ve already started vaccinating nationally, and this is, we hope, the beginning of the end of this pandemic. We’re still not there. Everybody still needs to be really, really careful. Keep your distance, wash your hands, stay at home. Really try and stop the current surge, so we can continue to roll out vaccination across our community, our institutional care people, our elderly, our vulnerable, our healthcare workers and our entire population, so everybody gets the vaccine. Everybody needs to be alive to get the vaccine, so please be very careful while you’re waiting, and we’re going to get to everyone as fast as possible.”
For Rosaline, Dr Motherway and all who receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, a second dose of the vaccine is required after a three-week period. The first batch of vaccines was delivered to UHL this Monday, and it is planned to administer 300 doses per day to all healthcare workers in UL Hospitals Group, the HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare Organisation and other healthcare settings. A network of peer vaccinators has been trained to administer the vaccines to staff, initially to those directly involved in patient care, including nursing, medical, healthcare assistants, allied health professionals and support staff.