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The New Statesman

Hi, I'm Anouche, and on today's episode of The New Statesman Podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Jim Down, an intensive care doctor at University College London Hospitals.

This year marks the NHS's 75th anniversary, which comes at a crisis point for the health service in this time of strikes and backlogs.

But our listeners may know Jim better for his work during the pandemic, from his 2021 book, Life Support, which chronicles his experience on the Covid frontline in an ICU ward.

And a New Statesman long-read headline The Peak, documenting one of his night shifts during the height of what was the first Covid wave in April 2020.

Now he's bringing out a second book all about life and intensive care called Life in the Balance, out on the 23rd of February.

Thanks so much for coming into the studio, Jim.

It's a great pleasure.

Now before we get into the meat of your book, I should tell our listeners that we are recording this episode in the week of the biggest round of strikes in NHS history.

What's the mood at your hospital like at the moment and among your colleagues?

I think we're all pretty unanimously supportive of the nurses and the ambulance workers, and potentially if it comes to the junior doctors, I think the feeling has been highlighted by the last couple of years being so extreme.

I think that we all feel that the nurses should be paid better for them and also for the future of the profession.

We're already whatever is in 40,000 short in this country, and that's only going to get worse unless we look after them, I think.

And so you'd call on the government to give the pay rises that they're demanding?

Yes, I would. I appreciate that it's a very easy thing to say from my position, and there's lots of consequences of that.

But I think both in nursing and in junior medical staff, it's the only way we're going to keep them in the profession, and we now know how much we need them.

I think everyone knows how much we need them.

And I think the shortages are severe, there's lots of reasons for that, which we've been rehearsed a lot.

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