Responding to the publication of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry Module 3 report, BMA council chair Dr Tom Dolphin said:
“Speaking on behalf of all doctors who worked through the pandemic, today’s module speaks most personally to the experiences of the human beings at the centre of the NHS’s response.
“While Baroness Hallett says it is a case of semantics, it’s good to finally have push-back against the narrative from politicians that the NHS was never ‘overwhelmed’. As Baroness Hallett says, ‘whatever word is chosen, the impact of the pandemic on healthcare systems, their staff and patients was devastating’.
“Hospitals stopped providing most elective care and barely managed to provide intensive care. Very clearly, the NHS was not providing care in a way that patients expected or doctors knew they needed, for either Covid or non-Covid conditions.
“We are glad to see Baroness Hallett specifically recognise that the fact we did not see the NHS collapse entirely is due to the dedication, commitment, and ultimately sacrifice, of healthcare staff, who she acknowledges put their patients before their own wellbeing and family life.
“Tragically, many – and disproportionately those from ethnic minorities – paid with their lives.
“The impact on doctors and our colleagues was stark, as painfully recounted in this report. Staff had inadequate access to PPE, and even though supplies may never have run out nationally, as the report says, this will have been ‘cold comfort’ to a doctor or nurse using a bin bag instead of a gown, or being forced to reuse a flimsy surgical face mask in the face of such a deadly disease.
“Throughout the pandemic and since, the BMA has urged a precautionary approach –assuming that a new disease like Covid could spread by any transmission route until proven otherwise – something we are pleased to see in Baroness Hallett’s findings. We should work on a ‘worst-case scenario’ basis, not scrape by on the bare minimum.
“The impact on staff was not just related to their own physical risk, but the trauma and moral injury suffered due to not being able to provide care to everyone, or the level of care they needed. As colleagues recount in terrible detail, we were seeing a level of death and suffering most had never experienced before.
“The cumulative impact of daily moral dilemmas was and continues to be devastating. As the report notes, by 2021, two-thirds of doctors responding to a BMA survey were suffering from a work-related mental health condition. These effects live on, with a third of doctors telling the most recent NHS staff survey they are experiencing burnout.
“There is welcome recognition that the NHS went into the pandemic overstretched and understaffed. This has not changed. While there is a recommendation to put in place plans to ‘scale-up’ capacity in the event of a new pandemic, when we’re running at our limits all the time, this flex cannot happen. The Government must go further, and increase capacity in non-pandemic times. This means more staff, and keeping and supporting the staff we have.
“The report makes a number of recommendations, but we urge the Government to look beyond just these and reflect properly on the full findings and the stark message they send about how both staff and patients were failed, and what needs to change to stop this happening ever again.”
Notes to editors
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