A hospital worker and her family have helped collect around 2,000 hand creams to donate to staff at Sunderland Hospital to help with their "sore hands" during the coronavirus outbreak.
Lucy Deegan, 39, and her husband Jason, 50, both work at Sunderland Royal Hospital as operating department practitioners but said constant handwashing has "cracked" their skin.
The coronavirus outbreak has meant NHS staff have stepped up their hand hygiene levels even more which has led to sore and often inflamed skin.
And to help her fellow colleagues Lucy appealed to the kindness of the public and asked people to donate hand creams that she could deliver to the hospital.
In less than a week, Lucy has so far collected around 2,000 creams and has thanked the public for their generosity.
Lucy, who is mum to Sebastian, 10, Alexandra, 8, and Monty, 3, explained: "Me and my husband are both ODP's, assisting the anaesthetists so we're very much on the frontline.
"With our job, we're always washing our hands anyway but since the coronavirus, I can't even tell you how many times we wash our hands each day.
"Our hands have started to get quite sore and cracked because of the amount of times we're washing and drying them.
"I was off work last week so I first put an appeal out for creams on Facebook last Wednesday and by Friday we already had about 100 hand creams."
To prevent any contact with other people, Lucy has left a box outside her house for people to drop off the creams.
She then brings the bottles inside and cleans and disinfects them with the help from her family including daughter Alexandra.
So far Lucy has donated the creams to several different departments including the Integrated Critical Care unit, maternity theatres and both C and D level theatres.
Lucy explained: "People are dropping them off by my door and I've even had Body Shop representatives help out too.
"I do know some people who are donating, but there's a lot of strangers who are coming up to the house to donate whatever they can. I've left a box outside my house so that people can just drop things in and we don't have contact with anyone.
"Some people are leaving little notes and chocolates and one person even left bread and milk for us and some sweets for my kids.
"They said it seems inadequate just to leave hand cream and said they were really grateful for all we do which was really nice.
"My daughter was helping me clean and disinfect all the bottles and we had so much stuff. I have to take them in little bits at a time because there's only so much I can take with me each day!
"People have been so kind, it really shows how people can come together in times like this.
"I'm going to keep it going as long as I can."
Lucy hopes the donations will not only help staff with irritable skin but will also help boost morale during these difficult times.
She said: "The staff were very grateful and kept thanking me but it's not me it's thanks to everybody else that we've got all these creams.
"I'm just trying to boost morale a little and help where I can because people are frightened.
"It's very weird at the moment, people are worried. We go to our jobs because we want to help people but we have to leave our family behind so it can be quite difficult."
If you would like to donate creams, message Lucy Deegan for more information.
