A mum-of-five from Nottingham has revealed how she managed to overcome adversity to return to the frontline during the pandemic to support her nursing colleagues in the fight against Covid-19.

Delicia Wild, 42, who had previously served as a nurse for five years between 2010 and 2015, returned to the profession in September last year after taking almost five years out to raise her young family.

“I missed being a nurse the whole time I was away from the profession and I missed making a difference to people’s lives.  I always knew that I wanted to go back into the profession – but only when the time was right. I had the wheels in motion to return to nursing just before the first wave of the pandemic. Then once we were in the midst of the pandemic, I felt an even greater pull to return and help out in the crisis, like so many other nurses”.

Delicia originally qualified as a registered nurse in 2010, working in the medical admissions unit and then in A&E at Queen’s Medical Centre. She carried out a further qualification in Specialist Community Health Public Health Nursing and worked as a health visitor in 2013. She then had her fourth child in 2014 and returned to work before eventually leaving for a career break in 2015.

Describing her desire to get back into the profession, Delicia said: “It was instinctive. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse.  Once the first wave of the pandemic hit, I wanted to help more so than ever and be there for my peers.”

Delicia had already started the process to return to nursing practice in July 2019 before the pandemic at a university in the region, but she became aware of a pilot scheme at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust which enabled her to work as a pre-registration nurse and ultimately return to the profession quicker.

However, just before she was about to join, the first wave of the pandemic struck and she was forced to put her return to the profession on hold as her husband was required to shield. Then in September 2020, she re-joined the profession as a pre-registration nurse but was unfortunately struck with a personal illness and had to take two weeks out following an operation.

She then went onto complete the first and second stages of her nursing competency tests and regained her nursing registration in November last year when she received a further set back and contracted Covid-19 and then sadly lost her father to an illness. Yet despite the adversities, Delicia remained focused on returning to the nursing profession and support the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

“To be a nurse is an honour and a privilege. You see people at their most vulnerable and to be able to nurse them back to health and make a difference is so fulfilling. I am so glad to have gone back to nursing and I know I have joined at the right time.”

Siobhan Heafield, the Regional Chief Nurse for NHS England and NHS Improvement in the Midlands who has herself deferred her own retirement to continue to help lead the region’s response to the pandemic, said: “We have had an incredible response from nurses in our region who have answered the call to come back into the profession, from retirement or from taking time out to raise a family, who have felt compelled to return to the frontline at such a critical time to support the NHS and the national effort against the coronavirus.”

“Sustaining our nursing workforce to ensure we can continue to care for patients is a priority through the NHS and I am incredibly grateful to our nursing colleagues like Delicia who have responded to our call to action and are making a difference to patients’ lives”.

Delicia is one of the 400 nurses from the Midlands region who have responded to the NHS’s call to action and join other hardworking NHS staff to support the fight against the coronavirus and build nursing capacity within the regions’ hospitals and is currently working at NUH’s Treatment Centre.