NHS staff have been traumatised by the pandemic – they cannot go on without support

The British Medical Association is right to highlight the dystopian reality for many doctors during the pandemic, with unimaginable levels of illness and death, many colleagues lost, no hospital visitors, and doctors having to hold phones in front of dying patients so they could say goodbye to loved ones.

To fulfil the promises made in the Armed Forces Covenant, the NHS established dedicated veterans’ mental health services in 2021, which provide rapidly accessed, occupationally informed care for veterans who have been psychologically injured because of their service. More than 13,000 former troops have benefited from specialist care for issues such as anxiety and depression and almost 2,000 more have received help for complex problems such as PTSD.

Despite the difference in context between the military on deployment and healthcare staff working during the pandemic, there are key similarities in terms of the exposure to trauma and risk to psychological and physical health.

The Medical Protection Society has called on the government to take inspiration from the veterans’ scheme when considering services for NHS staff severely impacted by their work during the pandemic.

The challenges from the pandemic are not over, they have merely evolved. If appropriate support is not offered, sadly we may lose many more staff from the workforce, placing even more pressure on stretched resources.

Dr Rob Hendry

Medical Protection Society

Since leaving gainful employment a few years ago, I find that I do not interact with any high earners (customers or the hierarchy); and I must emphasise I’m talking six-figures as a base point.

If they are still, fiscally speaking, in unaltered circumstances they must be delighted to hear that income tax might soon be reduced. Likewise, the lone parent at the end of my street who works part-time for a well-known supermarket as a checkout cashier must be equally relieved at the potential increase in take home pay.

For the latter, she can look forward to an extra chocolate bar for the children (between the two) per week and for the former an extra family holiday in the Caribbean next year. Aren’t politicians just great?

Robert Boston

Kingshill

Well, OK, I’m just an economic ignoramus. But isn’t the obsession with ever more growth one of the main drivers of climate change?

Growth depends on more trading, more manufacturing, more transport of people and goods, more use of energy and ultimately more waste.

Surely, wealthy countries should be aiming for stability rather than growth, and their wealthy residents might consider sharing some of their superfluous cash.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

For far too long we’ve ignored the importance of early years education. Concerning new research has highlighted the stalled development of 4 and 5 year olds. It’s no surprise that these reception-age children are those who had very little access to early years care during the pandemic.

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Children suffer without this support and the already considerable gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers widens. Yet we have not changed our treatment of early years education or its practitioners.

To solve the childcare crisis, some are calling for the scrapping of the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework. This is the very thing that standardises the quality of care that young children receive. Discarding it would only position early years practitioners as babysitters, rather than educators.

Instead, we must stop ignoring the importance of those first few years of a child’s development. The situation will only be improved when we give the early years profession more support and more prestige, not less.

The evidence screams out for us to overhaul our attitudes towards the care and education of the very young, for the sake of this cohort of children – whose lives have been so altered by the pandemic – and for every cohort to come.

Brett Wigdortz OBE

CEO of tiney.co and founder of Teach First