"In December 2021 members of Bridport Coronavirus Community Support group received a message asking for volunteers to help manage the flow of patients through the COVID vaccination process at Bridport Medical Centre.

Those first few clinics proved to be more challenging than we perhaps might have expected. The patients came from the 6 different GP practices that make up the Jurassic Primary Care Network and the plan was to vaccinate quite large numbers in each session, numbers that were as high, or higher than, those at the mass vaccination centres. I think the first couple of clinics were aiming to vaccinate 800 in a day but this quickly increased to 1,000 then 1,200 and eventually a peak of 2,500. The objective was that patients should be protected from COVID as quickly as possible but with the minimum of disruption to regular GP patient care. Where we differed from the mass vaccinations centres was that all this was happening at a modest GP clinic building with typical modest amounts space not designed to cope with such large number of patients and their cars, not least because on weekdays the building was already being used by patients, GP staff (face to face consultations took place throughout the pandemic where necessary) and pharmacy staff. Sometimes traffic became gridlocked and the two patient queues snaked round through the car parks and met at the back of the building but ways were found to cope.

Bridport Town Council offered the use of a small car park for vaccination staff at no cost and, during the winter and spring lockdown, another bigger car park for patients. When that was needed again for shoppers after lockdown a field behind the medical centre was used with the kind permission of BTC (who leased the land) and the landowner. We also had a team of volunteers inside the building helping direct patients into each vaccination room to try and keep the flow as smooth and rapid as possible plus volunteers keeping an eye on patients in the post-vaccination observation area (the marquee).

It all worked, even when things went slightly wrong, simply because volunteers found imaginative ways to resolve problems whether these were traffic issues, nervous or confused patients, fainting, collapsed patients needing CPR or too many patients queuing outside, or too many inside the marquee observation area (maximum capacity 60 at any time) or anti-vaccination protesters. The volunteers were an amazing team and took it all in their stride. We did however need quite a few volunteers to make things work efficiently - for the bigger clinics we had two shifts of 35 plus backups, so recruitment was quite a task, as was selecting and contacting the teams for each session.

Amazingly we never had a shortage of volunteers. Some were motivated by a need to feel that they were taking part in the effort to beat COVID, some wanted to help ensure that their family and friends were protected as soon as possible and some wanted to help speed up the process of resuming a normal life so that they could get back to work or back to enjoying life. What perhaps most did not realise was that volunteering would be so fulfilling or that they would have the opportunity to make so many new friends.

Personally I have many memories that will stay with me for a long time like, for example, the conversation I had with an elderly gentleman standing by the side of the road on his crutches who I thought might need some assistance. “No” he said, “I had my vaccination last week but I wanted to come down again and watch this amazing thing that Bridport is doing”.