Going to medical school or studying to be a nurse, you believe you are signing up for a life of service.
Understanding that it comes with years of hard work and exams, night shifts and missing important family events, you accept it as part of a life choice. It is not simply just a job.
What no one signs up for is risking their lives due to not having the correct protective equipment, watching teammates die or being off sick after a long stay in intensive care, suffering with indescribable fatigue and exhaustion and being many, many team members down, every single shift.
Lately, for colleagues up and down the country, going to work feels like entering a battlefield. In fact, it has done for a very long time.
Donning my scrubs and going to work in my local A&E, I feel proud to be part of an incredible team. I have been a doctor for over fifteen years and have friends who work on the frontline of our NHS all over the country.
One thing is clear: no matter where they are, or what speciality they work in, they all feel exhausted and many of them are considering leaving the jobs they love. It goes against every fibre of their being, but for nurses who are stretched beyond measure, GPs who are understaffed or surgeons who have had to cancel operations, it is simply becoming too much.
It is becoming more and more difficult to provide the world-renowned treatment and care they have been so proud of their entire careers.
For me, the biggest sign that staff are at breaking point up and down the country is the fact that so many admit to feeling numb throughout every shift, due to exhaustion and burnout.
Diagnosing cancer for the first time in A&E, knowing someone stayed away from the doctor for months in order to be “helpful at this time", is just heart-breaking.
Meeting patients who are having suicidal thoughts, unable to get the operation they have been waiting for endlessly and therefore unable to work, is deeply saddening. For so many NHS staff, the joy of the job has firmly left the building. It is only about survival now.
Just this week, walking home, I had to flag down a police car because a young mother and her baby were screaming in pain on the pavement after a nasty fall.
Despite other helpful passers-by calling for an ambulance, they were told to take a taxi to A&E. It was frightfully cold, mother and baby were scared and in pain. Because of the strain on ambulances, and how full A&E departments are, there was no way of knowing how long an ambulance would take.
I have kept in touch with the mother, and am pleased to say that her and her baby are doing well. In our darkest moments, and in our hours of need, it does not bear thinking about the worst that can happen with our safety nets stripped away from us.
This is caused by years of neglect of our NHS by a Conservative Government.
It has been almost two years of us all having to live with Covid-19, and during this time, the Government have let down patients, NHS staff and the country. If the Government doesn’t sort out their own mess as a matter of urgency, I truly question if there will be anything left to save.
