ICU nurses take on Channel swim to raise money for children’s charities

Evelina London Children’s Hospital staff hope to raise £60,000 for two charities with a relay swim of the English Channel

A 12-strong team of intensive care nurses and doctors are swimming the English Channel to raise £60,000 for two services that help save children’s lives.

The ten nurses and two doctors, who work for the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, have trained for about a year to prepare for the relay swim.

Six of the team completed the challenge in June, taking turns to swim for an hour at a time. They set off at midnight and took around 14.5 hours to cross the 22.5-mile stretch between England and France. The remaining six aim to take up the challenge in the first week of September.

Open water crossing ‘massive learning curve’ for amateur swimmer nurses

Known as STaRfiSh, the team’s fundraiser currently sits at more than £16,500 thanks to Gift Aid, but they hope to achieve their £60,000 target – in aid of the Children’s Air Ambulance and the South Thames Retrieval Service, which is based at the Evelina and supports the transfer of critically ill children from district hospitals to paediatric intensive care.

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‘All of us are amateur swimmers. We all enjoy swimming, but none of us previously had much open water experience, so it has been a massive learning curve,’ said children’s nurse Emily Kelly.

They have managed to fit regular sessions in swimming pools, lidos and lakes around their shifts, heading down to the south coast whenever possible. ‘It has brought us together as a team and been a good way for the whole unit to find something else to focus on other than work,’ said Ms Kelly.

Ms Kelly will be among the second group tackling the English Channel in the first week of September and they are hoping for good weather conditions.

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To comply with the rules for channel swims, swimmers must wear standard swimwear – not wetsuits– but can grease their bodies with Vaseline or goose fat to stay warm. ‘It’s all very glamorous,’ joked Ms Kelly, who successfully completed a 2.5 hour assessment swim in Dover harbour last week when the water was a chilly 14°C.

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STaRfiSH fundraiser

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