If you are a staff nurse for NHS, do you get tested for Covid?

[Boscoforever]

I am a SN in NHS, and have never been tested or offered a test. Or heard about them being routinely offered. But I've seen it crop up on some threads on here, "surely you get tested, etc".
I work in a dept, we carry out invasive procedures. If AGP then we wear full FFP3, if not then we just wear a paper mask and apron. The patients are swabbed but don't think many of them shield before coming in as they are supposed to do.
Just wondering if other areas are doing routine tests?

I'm very surprised that you have never been tested or offered a test. I'm a Senior Carer in a Dementia unit and we are tested every week.

Lateral flow tests are being rolled out across the NHS, when it gets to your trust you'll be given a box to take home and asked to test twice weekly
IWeekly PCR testing was already taking place in some areas of work

I’m not a staff nurse but my mum, mil and sister are and they are self testing twice weekly.

Yes, they should be rolling out lateral flow tests to you, my trust got them a week or two back.

A neighbouring trust was doing regular PCR tests on their staff during the first peak, my trust has never done that. So it has varied between trusts throughout the plague times.

We have the lateral flow tests and never been offered proper, regular testing.

If every staff member had been offered regular tests we may not have had a covid outbreak on our ward that lead to 95% of our patients catching coronavirus as well as 50% of staff.

I’m a SN in ITU and we don’t do staff testing in my hospital (Large district general teaching hospital in a major city)

All frontline staff can have twice weekly lateral flow tests (which they do at home with a box of 3 months worth) then any boxes left over have gone to other hospital staff, particularly those in shared offices. It’s not mandatory though.

@Livedandlearned but surely the fact you have lateral flow means you do have regular testing? In our trust, if you get a positive then you get the pcr test to confirm. So far, all staff getting positives on lateral flow have been confirmed positives by pcr. We’ve had one possible false negative.

We all got a box of lateral flow tests a few weeks ago but we don’t have regular PCR tests.

We do now but by the time everyone had them it was too late. And they are voluntary which means quite a few staff haven't collected theirs yet.

I tested negative on the lateral flow tests until day 5 which means I was contagious unknowingly.

I just feel that after the first wave not many lessons were learned in our trust.

I'm involved in lateral flow testing, it's open to all employees in our trust (including non-patient facing).

Prior to this, I could request a test for myself or family, I didn't need a reason. I have been tested once (outside of lateral flow), due to DDs high temp.

I'm not in England, and have to say I haven't heard of hospitals in my province doing this, maybe itis just England? Would love to be tested as have very elderly parents that need help.
Thanks for replies.

Hubby works in geratology. He has had alerts telling him he’s cared for people who later turned out to be positive, and been invited to have tests.

FIL got tested weekly (charge nurse)
MIL gets tested weekly (hospital cleaner)
Dr Friend on Covid ward gets tested daily!
Friend who is a learning support worker for young adults with SN also gets tested weekly.

no idea what type of tests they get.

Im a front of house receptionist for the NHS, I have the lateral flow tests and test twice weekly.

Our trust is a pilot for the lateral testing so we are testing twice weekly for 12 weeks , and have PCR if test positive at any time , but have quick access to PCR if we develop symptoms anyway with 24 hour turn around or less .