Live: former UK CNOs questioned at Covid inquiry

The nurse leaders, who were in post as CNOs during the pandemic, will be questioned by the inquiry today and tomorrow.

Nursing Times is at the inquiry centre and will be providing live updates below from the CNOs’ evidence.

First in the witness seat will be former England CNO Dame Ruth May followed by former Wales CNO Professor Jean White.

Former Scotland CNO Professor Fiona McQueen is due to give evidence this afternoon, and then former Northern Ireland CNO Professor Charlotte McArdle is expected to sit tomorrow morning.

England – Dame Ruth May. Reporting by Gemma Mitchell

10.03am Dame Ruth is now being sworn in to give evidence.

She is explained that her role as CNO was as a “professional leader” for nurses and midwives but not a line manager of them.

During the pandemic, she was the senior responsible officer for NHS England on the UK infection prevention control (IPC) cell and she also attended the Covid-19 national incident response board.

She was supported by four deputy CNOs and regional chief nurses across England.

10.15am Dame Ruth talks about the nurses she engaged with during the pandemic.

She says she had a telephone book of “probably the most forthright nurses in England at that time” who she would call to get their views. These nurses “helped me make some tough recommendations and decisions”, she said.

There was also a shared decision making council made up of frontline staff and the BAME strategic advisory group who Dame Ruth engaged with.

She says it through the BAME SAG, feedback from nurse leader Yvonne Coghill and the Jabali group of men’s nurses and working on the frontline herself that she learnt about the disproportionate impact of Covid on Black, Asian and minority ethnic nurses.

10.25am Dame Ruth breaks down in tears as she talks about what it was like working on the pandemic frontline. “It was an utter privilege,” she said.

10.30am England’s NHS had 5,000 fewer nurses and 700 fewer midwives in March 2020 because of the removal of the bursary in 2017, she said.

Ruth May speaking at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry

“Removing the bursary for me was a catastrophic decision,” she tells the inquiry

10.40am The issue of long Covid raised in the inquiry. Dame Ruth says a framework was introduced for staff caring for patients with long Covid after a meeting in December 2021.

“I took away from that meeting and others that we needed to support nurses supporting patients with long Covid and that’s why we developed a framework to do that,” she says.

The inquiry now turning to the NMC temporary register and how that was set up.

The recommendation for a temporary register was included in a letter from the UK CNOs on 6 April 2020 setting out ways to increase nursing capacity.

The decision was made to first invite back former nurses who left the register in the last three years, which was later increased to four-five years. This was done because the number of patients with Covid was “increasing at a further rate so we needed to take further action”, says Dame Ruth.

However, Dame Ruth is asked why the number of nurses being deployed was fewer than the numbers joining the temporary register.

She says this was one of the “areas of learning for us”.

There were issues across all four UK countries within a “lack of capacity within our regional BBS – bring back staff – teams”.

“Where it worked well was where a critical care nurse had left two-three years ago and still had a relationship with them and they rang them up,” she adds.

There were also “pre-employment bottlenecks” and a conflict in some cases between what the nurses wanted to do and where they were needed.

Dame Ruth says in wave 2 of the pandemic, many of the temporary register nurses joined the vaccination programmes.

“I’m grateful to everyone who came back to help us,” she says.

In terms of student nurses being deployed to the frontline, Dame Ruth says: “This was one of those tough decisions… none of us wanted to do this, we wanted to continue their education but we were in such a position that we needed to increase workforce numbers.”

She adds that it was not mandatory for students to join the frontline and they respected those who chose not to.

“There were risk assessments. But this was not an easy decision, but student nurses were amazing support,” says Dame Ruth.

11am Dame Ruth is asked about the issue of redeployment of nurses and the dillution of staff ratios.

11.25am After a break, the inquiry now turning to topic of IPC guidance.

In terms of her role on the IPC cell, Dame Ruth said it was “my remit was to challenge and ensure scientists have taken the latest evidence”.