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The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Daily: “This is battlefield medicine” – Frontline COVID Doctor Rachel Clarke

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How does it feel to work in the thick of the pandemic and spend time with patients you know will die? Rachel Clarke is a doctor in Oxfordshire who works in palliative care and her new book is Breathtaking: Inside The NHS In A Time Of Pandemic. She talks to Ros Taylor about the incredible personal stress of frontline medicine in the pandemic, the price Britain has paid for Boris Johnson’s “unforgivable” refusal to take the hard decisions, the death threats she’s had for telling the truth about COVID, and why we’re still so determined to look away from Britain’s appalling death toll from Coronavirus. “I feel murderous with rage and blind with fury when I hear the Prime Minister trot out his glib claims of success.” “I never in a million years thought we’d ever let things get as bad as 2020 again. Yet now we’re in worse conditions than that first peak.” “Boris Johnson knows he promised to protect the NHS and he has manifestly failed.” “The cruelest aspect of this pandemic is that all the ways we show our love are the ways that COVID spreads.” ““The unforgivable thing is not learning from your mistakes, and in Britain we’ve had a litany of mistakes” “If our Prime Minister wasn’t being given the science, or worse decided to juggle it for his own political imperatives, then that’s inexcusable” Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

0:17.0

Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.

0:22.0

Phoenix Group is the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business.

0:28.0

Search Phoenix Group living longer.

0:30.0

Pets brings so much joy.

0:32.0

From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa

0:36.7

so give a little love back with dental life from Purina a range of delicious chues made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets, teeth and gums, essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so look after

0:55.9

theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Welcome to the bunker daily. I'm Rose Taylor. We often talk about people on the front line of the pandemic.

1:12.0

With hospital visits largely banned and many people's

1:14.0

on the pandemic. With hospital visits largely banned and many people's lives

1:15.1

reduced to the home food, chopping and exercise, it can begin to seem like a

1:18.7

place that's very far away. Talking to me today is someone truly on the front line. Rachel Clark, a doctor in Oxford.

1:26.3

She works in palliative care looking after people at the end of their lives and her previous book,

1:30.7

Dear Life, was about dying.

1:33.0

It's a very moving account of how her own father's death influenced her work as a doctor.

1:37.0

I read it a few weeks after my own father's death in April to try and find, I don't know, some kind of closure, and I've found it very profound and helpful.

1:46.0

And I've been looking forward to talking to her ever since.

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