‘It feels like an eternity’: London hospital porter on coronavirus frontline | NHS Everyday Heroes

As part of our Evening Standard Everyday Heroes project we interviewed and photographed seven front line NHS workers involved in the fight against Covid 19.

Ray Peters’s job at the hospital was meant to be temporary after he was made redundant from his job as a motor engineer. Six years later he is still working there because, he says, ‘I like the people so much’.

During the pandemic he has done more hours, covering for colleagues in self-isolation, moving beds around and transporting samples.

‘Going into ICU and moving patients takes a bit of getting used to. You have to try and identify which patient to move but they all look the same when ventilated in space age machines so you have to try to find their name tags.’

He misses his grandsons, aged six months and three. ‘My life is just work then home then work again. It feels like an eternity since I saw my grandsons but it’s what you do. I work in a high risk area so it’s for their protection.’