Northampton General Hospital critical care staff give themselves another mountain to climb by hiking up Snowdon

A team of 18 life-savers from Northamptonshire General Hospital gave up their valuable time off to raise vital funds for the hospital by heading up one of the UK's tallest mountains.

Staff from the Cliftonville site's critical care unit — which spent the last 18 months treating thousands of seriously sick patients during the pandemic — hiked 1,085 metres up Mount Snowdon on Saturday (October 2).

But the Welsh mountains must have seemed like a pleasant Sunday stroll compared to the usual 'mountain' they have to climb every day at work.

Together, they raised more than £4,000 for Northamptonshire Health Charity which will go towards enhancing staff support and patient experience.

Frontline ITU nurse Amanda Garner said: "We are a large team who work in unison to care, treat and heal some of the sickest patients in the hospital.

"The unit gets very busy, the workload is extreme and intense, but we keep going and we never give up.

"We all work together through some of the toughest situations, we work long hours, under immense pressure to meet the demands of a bustling unit. But it is with care and compassion that we give everything we can, we push the boundaries and work tirelessly to make things right."

The bulk of work in the Critical Care unit has been dealing with thousands of Covid-19 patients since the pandemic kicked in during March 2020, although more than 700 have sadly died with the virus.

Amada added: "This last 18 months has seen even some of the strongest struggle, with the ever lasting heartbreak and emotive situations we've all endured during this awful pandemic.

"We have dedicated our lives to our profession and we have exceeded our expectations in not only our own abilities, but the abilities of our team. We have worked in exhaustively to combat Covid, we have cried with our patients, we have cried together, we have cried alone.......but through it all the camaraderie has been off the scale, and we beam nothing but pride for our team.

"I truly believe that we have learnt more than most in the value of love....and loss, through what we have seen."

Money raised from Sunday's hike will help boost staff well-being and morale and to support and improve rehabilitation services for patients.

Amanda added: "There are many ways to improve our morale and our facilities, however it is only with charitable donations we can do this.

"Working in such a busy, intense environment, there are various things that we can change to not only support our staff, but our patients too, making their experience with us more bearable and patient-centred, but to also rest and reassure our loving staff.

"We have several ongoing wellbeing projects for the staff, whether this be meaningful projects, counselling or things to make the staff room more cosy and relaxing.

"We also aim to look at rehabilitation for our patients, sometimes our patients have long stays with us and the four walls of our unit can be draining."

■ Visit Amanda's Just Giving page HERE to make a donation to the Critical Care team's Snowdown hike.