Coronavirus: Healthcare workers and burnout

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Dr Solelwa Sifumba in Johannesburg, South Africa, recently left the profession after experiencing such chronic anxiety that it even led to her considering taking her own life. She is joined by two fellow doctors in the UK, as they discuss burnout and the mental health challenges of working in constant crisis mode since the pandemic began. They tell host Nuala McGovern about the difficulty in their profession to say they are not ok. We also talk to two therapists in the United States and UK.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Nula McGovern on the BBC World Service and this is BBC OS, conversations on
0:07.3	coronavirus, healthcare workers and burnout.
0:25.2	The effects of the pandemic are far from over and we wanted to stop and examine the mental and physical fallout for those who are doing their utmost to keep COVID patients from dying, including doctors who now want to leave their profession.
0:31.3	I guess the world expects all the health care workers to just keep giving and giving and giving.
0:37.0	But they're not looking at the fact that we're struggling and they're not addressing those struggles because these struggles didn't start with COVID.
0:46.5	During the past year we've often heard about the enormous challenges facing
0:51.5	health care professionals.
0:53.0	Many are exhausted battling COVID-19 with seemingly no end in sight.
0:59.0	And even for those in countries where death rates have reduced significantly, the trauma of seeing so much pain
1:05.4	and death, often under the most difficult conditions, remains.
1:10.5	Not surprisingly, perhaps, some research suggests that a significant number of health care employees around the world have considered leaving their profession.
1:20.0	So we brought together three doctors who have left or are thinking of leaving their jobs on the front line.
1:26.0	Dr. Zalele West Fumba is in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1:30.0	Dr Rosie Schier is in the UK UK and Dr Bethan John, who we'll hear first, is also in the UK and works in Liverpool.
1:39.0	When the pandemic happened, it was all hands-on-deck.
1:42.0	I was redeployed to the children's hospital at the time to kind of
1:45.6	proper the rotor and the staffing there. I guess I was lucky in a way to not have been
1:50.5	you know front-line like some of our colleagues in emergency medicine and
1:54.3	an ascetics and intensive care. It was quite a blur at the time and then when that redeployments
1:59.2	finished I just felt like then I had some kind of serious decisions to make it just yeah it just put everything into perspective for me
2:06.8	You've been working for a doctor for how long exactly?
2:09.8	For about eight to nine years now. And the training before that?
	...

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