Covid stress has led to society’s frustration

Mr Ian McDermott

Mr Ian McDermott, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at London Sports Orthopaedics and honorary professor associate at Brunel University, responds to the survey.

In my practice, I’ve noticed a much higher than normal level of general stress and tension, from hospital staff, our own staff in our own practice, from other doctors and from patients – i.e. from everyone!

I think an enormous amount of psychological damage has been done to everyone, world-wide, and frustration at ’the virus’ and/or ‘the Government’ – depending on one’s perspective – is now, purposely I believe, spilling out into stress and tension between individuals; for example ’the masked’ vs ’the non-masked’ and ’the vaccinated’ vs ’the non-vaccinated’.

And for many, who perhaps struggle to make any sense at all about everything that’s going on, their reaction may simply be one of general stress and angst, with a shorter fuse, quicker tempers and a greater likelihood of anger.

I don’t think this is actually unique in any way to medicine within the private sector. I think it’s a much wider and broader thing across the whole of society, including how some people are driving.

Other illness

I suspect that there might well be a lot more stress/anger directed by some people now towards the NHS because of the deep frustrations that so many people have suffered with reference to almost all non-Covid healthcare being stopped because of just one specific pathogen/condition, and with every other illness being treated as if it is unimportant by comparison. 

People can’t get to see a GP in person. They struggle to even get a phone-call or video consult with a GP. 

They’re ’told off’ if they attend A&E for non-emergency problems. They’re told they’ll have to wait two years to see a consultant specialist or a dentist. 

They’re told that there are literally millions of people on NHS waiting lists now and that they’ll have to wait umpteen months or even years for any elective surgery. 

And yet they’re still being subjected to the ‘Save the NHS’ mantra, to videos of nurses and doctors doing TikTok dances and to adverts for free pizzas and coffees for NHS staff. 

I’m just very, very glad and relieved that I’m not still practising within the NHS myself anymore. 

My friends who still do are all saying that it’s even more stressful and difficult than it was pre-Covid and how they simply can’t get anything done anymore.

My personal perspective of the independent sector is that, at present, there’s still a lot of stress, uncertainty and inefficiency when it comes to getting patients booked in for surgery, because of all the many ever-changing, arbitrary and oft-times illogical rules and restrictions. 

However, otherwise, I’ve thankfully not noticed or suffered any significant level of increased abuse from anyone. Yet!