Frontline staff at DCH to receive second dose of Covid-19 vaccine

As previously reported, the Dorchester-based hospital, which employs around 2,800 people, has been administering the first jab to its frontline staff since early December.

The majority have received the Pfizer BionTech vaccine.

Professor Alastair Hutchison, chief medical officer at the hospital, said staff members are now ‘looking forward’ to receiving their second dose in early March.

Prof Hutchison said: “We are starting the second dose of vaccinations in early March. We will be vaccinating all of our own frontline staff plus staff from the community trust, Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust and also a lot of the healthcare workers from the local council and care homes.

Clap for carers at Dorset County Hospital

“I think everyone will be very happy as it is being done and will give staff a lot more confidence, but at the same time it will not diminish the need for appropriate PPE.

"PPE has been a major additional factor in making it more difficult for staff like putting on PPE and just the difficult of moving around with PPE and communicating with other staff members with PPE.

“All of that adds to the difficulty of healthcare.

“What we will hope to see is the Covid positive patients going down rapidly as well as staff members becoming infected.

"We have had a number of staff coming into contact with people with Covid and self-isolate for two weeks and this is a dent to the workforce.”

Frontline workers make up approximately 85 per cent of the employees at the hospital. Prof Hutchison said frontline workers are defined by many NHS Trusts as those ‘who come into contact with patients in a working week’.

Outside Dorset County Hospital with Chief medical officer Alastair Hutchison inset. Picture: DCHFT

Prof Hutchison said that the process of rolling out the second jab should be much smoother as ‘staff have learned a lot about doing it quickly and effectively'.

He noted that the multiple steps involved, including checks on ID, allergies and vaccine preparation, were not difficult but took some time to 'get it down to a fine art'.

Prof Hutchison added: “We got up to doing 2,000 vaccinating a week and so for example we employ about 3,000 staff members but they are not all frontline staff members. Dorset Healthcare employs several thousands of people and then there are the care home staff and it was many thousands of staff but going at a rate of 2,000 a week, you can get through people pretty quickly.

“Of course, it is true to say that there is a significant number of staff involved in the vaccination programme and they have other jobs as well.

“Some have been doing vaccination work in their spare time, so the vaccination programme isn’t without its challenges.”