Dr Vaish Kumar: Another doctor bullied to the point of suicide

[ExpulsoCorona]

Just been reading the sad story of Dr Vaish Kumar. I'd already heard of the toxic work environment at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital. 4th doctor suicide and no-one is being held to account.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-64333162

It's desperate to think about the events that led up to this.

Her father speaks about her with such grace and dignity. There's a heartbreaking video of Dr Kumar's mother speaking about this wretched death.

That Trust is in desperate need on an independent inquiry. How many more people must be sacrificed to this toxic work culture and management?

This is awful. I wish anyone who felt like this because of work would just quit, however disasterous that may seem. There's always another job somewhere doing something, finances can be juggled and lifestyle changes made but you only have one life. It's always worth trying to make changes, any changes, before giving up altogether on life. I hope nobody else feels compelled to do this because of work, 4 in one place is a lot

This is so heartbreaking. I've always said and I have no problem with saying it either. In my opinion suicide (if caused through how you are treated by others) is at the very least involuntary manslaughter. If poor Vaish wasn't been bullied and tormented would she have ended her life.

How awful. It's better to walk away from a situation if things are that bad. She was obviously highly conscientious though and devoted to her work. I hope those responsible are held to account.

Its not the victims job or responsibility to walk away though is it. Surely its on others not to bully and humiliate. It may have been Vaish's wish since she was a little girl to become a Doctor. Why should she have given it up for bullies.

So I used to work at the QE for four years, then moved to the trust this doctor worked at last year. I personally loved working at the QE (hate SWBH), I obviously can’t speak for every department, but I will say in my department (and other departments I worked in) there is a very intense high pressured culture, they expect excellence and have a very low tolerance for anyone who isn’t amazing. I witnessed no more bullying from doctors than at any other trust I have worked at (unfortunately there is bullying everywhere, especially from consultants and nothing is done about it), but I will say their standards are extremely high and if you don’t meet them you know about it, they are not very forgiving of mistakes or slow learners. Your life will be hell there if you don’t meet their expectations.

It’s not a very supportive environment tbh, if you’re a fast learner and excel in your field you will love it, if you need a bit more support you will hate it there. They need to learn how to support staff better, because not everyone is incredible straight off the bat, some people need a bit of support and help to excel.

The trust she came from is where I currently work and I hate it here (I am leaving soon), the doctors are equally as horrible, but standards are poor and they have a high tolerance for poor quality work and knowledge from my experience. I much much preferred the QE (as do many of my colleagues), but I know people who hated
it there and it does have a bad reputation for being unfriendly and unsupportive.

I hope junior doctors will now have their #metoo moment. So many are speaking out after hearing about this case.

@Elsiebear90 Whilst I understand what you are saying and am aware of different cultures within trusts, I don't think your comment about competence, standards and having not witnessed any bullying is particularly useful in the context of a person's recent suicide. It screams of denialism and trying to reduce their experience and putting their struggle down to not being up to the high standards of the trust and putting the blame entirely on them. All the language about you loving it there and it is great if you are incredible and amazing and excel from the beginning, and that people who are slow learners will know about it in the context of someone's suicide is just incredibly insensitive and I'm not sure you are aware of that. Whether you are deliberately trying to making such implications or not, the message coming from your post seems to be saying that someone who is not as competent may be pushed to suicide but someone who meets their high standards will love it. I'm not sure making or at least heavily hinting towards such assumptions is accurate, fair or the decent way to go about this sort of news.

You’re right. I would not have posted my experience had OP not talked about the toxic environment at the QE. I was giving my honest experience working there and explaining how the culture can be toxic and unsupportive. There is bullying everywhere you work in the NHS unfortunately (as I said), so the individual circumstances surrounding her bullying may have had nothing to do with her not meeting expectations there, I should have made that clearer in my post, so apologise that it came across that way. It wasn’t my intention, I was trying to provide an insight into why the QE might have the reputation it does, but accept it was poorly worded and I should have been more sensitive to the situation.