How new challenges re-energised our nursing careers

Two nurses prompted by the pandemic to move jobs talk about their new career paths

When nurses Sabine Schwaebisch and Rhian Simmons were seconded to a COVID response unit in April 2020 they knew it would be a challenge. But what they didn’t know was that it would prompt them to take their careers in new directions.

Both had been working at Helen House , a children’s hospice in Oxford, when they volunteered for the 16-week redeployment to a former adult hospice that had been transformed into a unit for up to 26 patients with COVID-19 for whom intensive care was unsuitable.

The contrast between their usual duties as