Patient saved by hospital retrains to return as frontline health carer

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Giving back: Kate Baker as a helper at Queen’s hospital and, inset, as a patient there

A woman is to work on the coronavirus frontline in the London hospital that successfully treated her brain tumour.

Kate Baker, 38, has left her sales job temporarily and will next week become a healthcare assistant at Queen’s hospital in Romford.

She was inspired by the care she received at Queen’s for a benign brain tumour in December 2016. She had already become a hospital volunteer but wanted to go further and help deliver care to patients on wards.

Ms Baker, from Colchester, who has a five-year-old son, Max, responded to a recruitment campaign by Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust seeking temporary staff to help care for patients during the pandemic.

The trust, which runs Queen’s and sister hospital King George in Ilford, has declared 135 Covid-19 deaths so far.

Ms Baker has completed training and said she is swapping her high heels for flats. “My heart was really drawn to being a healthcare assistant. Staff at the hospital cared for me, so I wanted to give something back.”

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