To think people are very quick to forget the pandemic

[BelleMarionette]

Myself, and other junior doctors, worked hard on the covid wards, in appalling conditions. We didn't have decent PPE, and often had little to no relevant experience or training, as many were redeployed with little notice (in my case, 36 hours). Almost all of of us became sick, some very seriously so, and some even died. Many more were left struggling with our own mental health, suffering from PTSD, anxiety and depression.

We are now striking, due to pay erosion over the past 15 years. In real terms its around a 30% pay cut. It's difficult to live on what we are be being paid, especially with families to support.

I have seen an awful lot of negative comments about junior doctors on another thread. Aibu to think the public has been very quick to forget our contribution during the pandemic?

I would dearly love to be wrong and see support

It depends how you define “empty beds” doesn’t it.

One of my closest friends is a doctor who was working on Covid wards throughout the pandemic. For much of the time through the pandemic and lockdown , it was the least busy time of his career, he regularly left work several hours early because there was nothing to do- his normal experience is having to stay extra hours- never copping off early like he could then.

I have been told the same from paramedics, ER staff, from paediatricians. People were afraid to call ambulances or turn up to hospital. Meanwhile, There were many many months during lockdowns, where Covid cases were very low, but other health services remained closed.

There is a very clear definition: a bed without a patent.

All our beds were full. First with covid patients, then with medical patients as the covid patients lessened. There was a constant juggling act of converting wards to covid wards, then back again to medical wards.

Clearly you don't have a source, but are relying on the testimony of 'a friend'.

Once again, the NHS was open throughout covid. Hospital beds were never empty.

a bed without a patient
well, for example , I recently gave birth and was kept on labour delivery on the grounds there were no “beds” in postnatal. When I was finally moved there were rooms full of empty beds with no patients.
presumably , the issue was the lack of staff to manage them..?
I have many times been in hospital and witnessed the presence of beds with no patients in them, so either your initial statement is wrong, or the definition isn’t as clear as you make out.
I’m not denying your experience at your particular hospital.
I know my friend’s experience , because I was there, and he is a close friend. It is also the experience of many , many other healthcare professionals.
The reasons are clear. Health services were shut down / cancelled and directed to the pandemic, yet there were extensive periods of time during the pandemic when Covid cases were very low. Do you deny this is the case? It is also the case that people stopped attending hospitals etc , partly out of fear and partly because they believed they would be turned away. Do you deny this too?

For those saying about other workers, yes supermarket workers did a brilliant job in keeping things ticking over as did many other workers and I know most people are very aware of this, but health workers were in a pretty unique position (and I include care workers in this too) of having to deal with very sick people of all ages and horrendous emotional stresses of no family around , conversations on iPad , large amounts of things not normally seen such as ventilation , far more deaths in hospital than normally dealt with- that's a unique situation and I find it offensive that people speak in such a derogatory way on here. I'm not a health worker/medic - but I did 18 months nursing training in the 80s and the few deaths I witnessed played on my mind for weeks - I can only imagine going in day in and out under these circumstances.

It really depended on the specialty and where in the country you worked. Some parts of the country really faced the brunt of the pandemic.
Medicine, ITU, ED all worked relentlessly but the same can't be said about other specialities. I am not sure what an ophthalmologist or a dermatologist did during the pandemic. Even if they were happy to help, the skill set needed was not there.
Most junior doctors irrespective of which speciality they were contracted to work were all roped in to cover the covid wards. With so much sickness and self isolation even if the doctors family was symptomatic, it was chaotic and they were told where they worked on a daily basis. I have had junior doctors break down completely during the pandemic,
don't forget some were 23/24 year olds straight out of med school, some of them were really sick in their accommodation with no one to care for, they had seen what happens to the patients first hand.

For example, there were two junior doctors sharing a flat very close to hospital, both of them were sick and were keeping company via WhatsApp but my junior could see her friend deteriorating could not get ambulance so called me and I had to call someone in our team to literally go and take her to A and E !
As medics we just felt helpless, there was no
logic - you lost fit healthy 30/40 year olds, the patients who was doing well died after you finished your shift, you just can't get around that!

PPE was not adequate but I guess it is the same for everyone , I did aerosol generating procedures throughout the pandemic, never had PPE fitted properly.
I never bought into to the clapping non sense and knew what the public reaction would be after pandemic.

In most cases, the junior doctors were not paid for extra time they did out of
goodwill even during pandemic. When I supported my juniors for the extra pay for these hours, they were told that they should know to prioritise their jobs, not do non emergency job that can be left till the next day by staying over time, to keep a diary to monitor their hours !!!

It is a disgrace how they were treated and still being treated !

In spite of working during pandemic, if they missed their training targets they could not progress in their training! There was some flexibility but not enough. How could you do the necessary amount of clinics and operations if there were no or not enough opportunities?

A lot of the junior doctors couldn't do their necessary exams to progress because of the pandemic!
There is still a long waiting list to get a date for these exams.

But I’m also talking about medical doctors who worked Covid wards! Yes, peek weeks were busy, but there were also months and months where not much was going on at all. The pandemic came in short sharp waves , but there were long protracted periods where regular health services were operating to just a fraction of what they previously were.

I have realised that people just believe what they want to believe.. the two threads since yesterday has been a real eye opener. I am an ardent supporter of NHS but I beginning to have second thoughts!

Doctors did telephone clinics, instructions to patients on medications like immunosuppressants etc
endoscopies happened in our hospital, set up pathways so patients could have their operations - these things need clinical knowledge which was rapidly changing , working with other departments, formulating and initiating the pathways.., For example patients had FIT, triaged .. sent for scanning and scoping prioritised - who made these things happen,? Not government or managers - it was primarily led by clinicians.
Green pathways for surgery - when to swab, who should the result go to, how many days the patients have to self isolate prior to surgery, which part of the hospital the surgery needs to happens, which corridor the patient needs to come, which surgeon would be allocated for this, how should the rota be formulated so he or she does not get exposed to covid prior to surgery - managers or government did not have a clue!

What about carers to who worked with covid residents without ppe and long hours very bad pay etc. Many carers also,died from covid

I have no idea where you are, perhaps a location would give context to this, but the NHS publishes figures on bed occupancy. What you are saying does not fit in with the objective figures. A bed might not physically have a person in it for a short time, between one patient leaving and the next arriving, but this is extremely unlikely to be a whole day.

As I said before, after the peaks, the wards were converted back to medical wards. The patients were always there. A&E always had patients too, as the covid patients were always there, even if there were less medical patients for a time. Health services were not shut either, staff were just redeployed temporarily. Our outpatient clinics still ran target clinics and urgent appointments throughout. These were all face to face. All of what you say reads like the anti vaccine conspiracy theorists rantings.

ProfLayton gives an honest account, that is recognisable to me. To add though, those in specialities such as mentioned above were redeployed, generally to ITU or covid wards.

I don't really think the two things are linked, apart from emotional rhetoric.

Doctors should be paid a fair amount for their work, regardless of what happened during the pandemic.

I don't think people have forgotten that many doctors worked hard and really sacrificed. Some others didn't cover themselves with glory, though.

Yep. Gaslighting and calling my statements “anti vaccine conspiracy theorist rantings ”, for merely stating what is true.

You say this:

The patients were always there. A&E always had patients too, as the covid patients were always there, even if there were less medical patients for a time. Health services were not shut either, staff were just redeployed temporarily. Our outpatient clinics still ran target clinics and urgent appointments throughout. These were all face to face.

Im not denying any of that. Patients were always there, there were just less of them.

The fact is that all but the most urgent of non-COVID care was cancelled, including many cancer treatments. To free up capacity, hospitals were encouraged to discharge patients into care homes or their own homes. GPS shifted to remote consulting. Attendance at A&E dropped radically etc. You claim that these measures / happenings were only during peek weeks and seamlessly and immediately shifted during periods that Covid cases dropped. This is both 1) untrue and 2) implausible.

Maybe so but that isn’t the point. No-one can, or should, be forced to do an extremely difficult and draining job, which means that we will end up with even fewer doctors (who cannot be replaced easily/possibly at all) if we pay them peanuts.

The amount of money someone has is rarely linked to how much they deserve it compared to someone else (who might work harder, do more socially valuable work etc) but the government is just taking the piss here and hoping people will be doctors purely for loyalty to the NHS or the love of the job.

Since you say that what I am writing doesn’t reflect the “objective figures”, I have taken some time to look some up.
Total average daily occupancy of overnight beds in England during April - June 2019 was 113,262.
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1920-Q1-Beds-Open-Overnight-Web_File-Final-DE5WC.xlsx

In April-June 2020 this figure was 76,641.
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Beds-Open-Overnight-Web_File-Q1-2020-21-Final-1.xlsx

Yes, this. It was difficult on Covid wards, but not all NHS staff were involved. Many were in departments that had virtually closed down.

I really felt sorry for shop workers - they got little protection, and were abused and sometimes assaulted by stroppy members of the public.

Delivery drivers helped keep the show on the road.👍

Yes, the carers in my Dads home were absolute stars, working very long hours for a pittance. They weren't getting all the freebies being delivered to hospital either. (My daughter works for the NHS, and there were endless parcels, donations and gifts for staff, arriving daily.)

Then our local hospital discharged a lot of elderly patients into Dads nursing home, without testing, Covid ripped through it, and it was chaos, killing a lot of the residents.🙁

@Tandora

FWIW my friend is a junior doctor in a large North Yorkshire hospital and she was quiet throughout COVID. I don't live in NY but would call her often as I was so concerned about her at the time. Her response was always that they weren't as bad as the news coverage. I've another friend, also in NY but a physio in another hospital and it was the same for her too.

There are so many trusts, counties and they all had varying levels of severity. Obviously the news was never going to show the areas where they were coping ok as this wouldn't have aligned with the agenda i.e for us to comply with the rules.

Without testing? Our local hospital knew they had residents with COVID and still sent them to my daughter's nursing home. The arguments she had with hospital staff were disgusting. And at a time they had no PPE and had to work with dying patients.

My daughter was 19 with barely any experience and was holding her residents hands as they died. Desperately trying to comfort them at a time when no family or even a vicar could visit. And when they did die, no doctor could be seen anywhere. All that for £11/hour.

Doctors are highly trained and have to make life and death decisions every day and should 100% be paid more. The whole NHS will collapse if we can't retain the skilled staff. They deserve to be higher earners and I see a lot of people doing far easier desk jobs for a lot more than they get.

The Government and the NHS are running it into the ground. Too many managers on ridiculous salaries for doing sod all. Too many doctors on ridiculous salaries buggering off during the week to work private practise, too many nurses working bank for half the week on the same ward. Too many patients that don't need to be near a hospital.

We came out of our houses every Thursday to clap for you. Isn't that enough?

(Yes, totally support your strike by the way OP).

I don't personally care if some doctors sat around twiddling their fingers and playing on Facebook - the fact is we don't have a surplus of doctors and many are voting with their feet and going elsewhere- Brexit hasn't helped either with medical staff in general. The pay for junior doctors is appalling given that a young accountant or IT worker (my son is one) is earning more.

I support striking, but even if people don't, they should at least support the right to strike.

And at last it’s all coming out !! That Matt Hancock is a nasty evil thing. Just horrendous!

Don't even mention his name in our house!

She hates the lying, cheating scumbag. She couldn't believe he stood in front of a camera and lied through his teeth when her care home was on its knees.

I think a lot of care workers will never ever vote for the Tories. It'll be like mining families when Thatcher closed the mines.