Inside Health

Second Covid wave should not see NHS hit as badly as first, says Alisdair Gilmour

As the bells tolled midnight and 2019 became 2020 I’m fairly certain no one predicted what lay ahead of us this year.

The past seven months have been difficult, to say the least: a nationwide lockdown, hundreds of thousands of tests carried out, far too many lives lost.

For junior doctors in S cotland, many went into 2020 expecting to finish their training and progress to the next stage of their career.

However, many training programmes ground to a halt back in March as an allhands- on- deck approach was taken and, for a lot of junior doctors, that has meant fewer hours in the operating theatre, out-patient clinic or less time spent in their specialt y.

I consider myself to be ver y for tunate – I’m a trauma and or thopaedic surger y trainee, and currently spend most of my time at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital where I’ve been able to continue much of my training without too much disruption.

I am due to complete training in August 2021 and, even with cases of Covid-19 on the rise again, I am hoping to make it over the remaining hurdles.

Unfor tunately, I cannot say the same for all of my colleagues across the various specialties and especially those a couple of years behind.

Many of them are now looking at another six months – perhaps even a year or longer – of additional training in order to get the competencies and skills they need to progress.

In the grand scheme of things, par ticularly doctor training, an extra few months isn’t a huge deal.

However, it is the long-term impact this could have on the NHS in S cotland that causes me real concern.

Our key concern is patients: they’re why we go into medicine in the first place. And in order to provide the consultants of tomorrow, we must receive the proper training – something I’m sure our patients also want us to have.

The more delays there are to ser vices restar ting, the longer the delay in education goes on.

That bottleneck of junior doctors tr ying to complete their training could potentially have a knock- on effect to the ongoing sup - ply of trained doctors we so desperately need in S cotland to replace those who are retiring over the next few months and years.

We still don’t truly know what is ahead of us in the coming months, but one thing I am fairly cer tain about is that we are likely to face a ver y difficult winter as we navigate rising cases of Covid-19 as well as all the usual winter illnesses, not to mention the existing long-term illnesses many people are currently living with.

Patients need us more than ever and we want to do our ver y best for them.

That is why it is essential for education and training to continue now that we have star ted to remobilise the NHS in S cotland.

And even if we have a second wave of Covid-19, it is vital that ser vices are not stopped again – not just for career progression for S cotland’s doctors but, most impor tantly, to deliver frontline elective and emergency care across our health ser vice, now and in the years to come.