THE SPECIALIST WHO’S BEEN REDEPLOYED

dr max pemberton is an nHS psychiatrist and daily mail columnist.

The past ten days have been the scariest and most challenging of my medical career.

By the time I came into work the morning after Boris Johnson announced we had moved from the ‘delay’ to ‘contain’ phase, managers who had been up all night had already started to implement profound changes to the way our hospital was run.

Mental health patients are at particular risk because they are likely to have underlying physical health problems, so it is essential the wards are prepared for infected patients and there are beds for them.

We have discharged whole wards in preparation, and have had to make uncomfortable decisions about redeploying staff and clearing space in preparation for the tidal wave of sick patients that is anticipated.

I am one of those that was redeployed for a short time, to cover an inpatient psychiatric ward, because the junior doctor had to self-isolate. As well as all the usual junior doctor jobs such as writing up drug charts, my main job was to identify patients who could be discharged. All the patients were very unwell and none would have usually been sent home, yet we had no choice.

Then we had a case of suspected Covid-19, so the patient had to be nursed in isolation. The time and resources this took was considerable — it required wearing an apron, eye mask, face mask, shoe covering and gloves.

To add to it all, my partner has an inherited liver condition which means he is high risk so I am having to frantically arrange a hotel to move into to protect him.

As more staff members go off sick or have to isolate it is inevitable that I will be asked to cover other wards. At the moment I have stayed working within my area of expertise — mental health — but we must be prepared to be redeployed. This is daunting, but medical and nursing training in this country is thorough so I know we will cope.

I have never been prouder of our NhS and to play my part in it. At times of national crisis like this we see the value of having a healthcare system like ours. There is no way that other countries could have achieved the kind of extraordinary, gargantuan reorganisation in literally a matter of days. We all knew that there would be changes to the services we offer, but the scale and speed of these changes has taken us all by surprise.

This crisis has shown the NhS at its absolute best. You quickly learn to appreciate how important every person’s job is. It’s been a tough week and it’s hardly even begun. But I want you to know this: we are working tirelessly and will do our very best for you. See you on the other side.