We are the parents of a GP trainee who had her rota changed at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and is now working in an A&E department for the foreseeable future. You published a letter from us on 2 April, but we now feel the need to write a follow-up.
On Friday Matt Hancock stated: “We need everyone to treat PPE like the precious resource it is … Everyone should use the equipment they clinically need, in line with the guidelines; no more and no less” (NHS workers angered at Hancock’s warning not to overuse PPE, 10 April), thereby implying that our daughter and her colleagues are using PPE unnecessarily, without any clinical need. Does he think our healthcare professionals (HCPs) are putting on cumbersome personal protective equipment not because they are at risk from a deadly virus, but because they like the look of it?
This is an astonishing statement considering that this government is currently demonstrably failing to supply NHS employees with sufficient quantities of PPE. It is a monstrous diversion to claim that our daughter and her colleagues are somehow responsible for Mr Hancock’s lack of foresight, planning and strategic management. Shame on him.
Of course, we do not have any reliable government data relating to the number of deaths of HCPs. If Mr Hancock is so certain that staff are using PPE unnecessarily, he should publish this data so we can judge for ourselves; otherwise this is just a diversion and an attempt to cynically shift the blame for the lack of PPE on to overworked and distressed HCPs.
Regarding the use by Mr Hancock and his colleagues of words like “precious resource”, he will find none more precious than our daughter, who is watching her colleagues become ill, resulting in intensive care admission, patients left to die because they are too ill to rescue, and patients having to be left to die in isolation. Our most precious resource is going to be left with these images all her life.
We wonder how Mr Hancock is sleeping at night.
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