A recent study published in The BMJ revealed how doctors’ lives were impacted by treating patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Kelly Fearnley, a health care provider who first joined the surgical ward at Broadford Royal Infirmary, was deployed on considered one of the COVID-19 wards opened because the second COVID-19 wave began. The doctor expected filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) masks and long-sleeved surgical gowns but was surprised to seek out surgical masks and plastic pinnies on a ward stuffed with COVID-19 patients.

Fearnley worked 10 hours day by day for five days and was exposed to high viral loads on a ward without ventilation and respiratory protective equipment. Consequently, she tested COVID-19-positive the subsequent week and has not worked since. She relinquished the provisional registration on account of long COVID and can’t currently work as a health care provider.

Feature: Long covid: the doctors’ lives destroyed by an illness they caught while doing their jobs. Image Credit: p.sick.i / Shutterstock

Support networks and charities

In August 2022, Fearnley co-founded Long COVID Doctors for Motion (LCD4A), a support network campaigning to acknowledge long COVID and its impact on the health and careers of doctors. LCD4A members include doctors dismissed on capability grounds, those that lost their places during training programs, and others who applied for sick health retirement several many years ago.

Long COVID is a condition with diverse symptoms that persist for 4 weeks or longer after acute COVID-19, that are unexplained by alternative diagnoses. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK (UK) estimated around 1.9 million cases of long COVID in March 2023. There aren’t any precise estimates for the way many healthcare employees and doctors have this condition, albeit ONS data suggests that 4.4% of healthcare employees acquired it.

The British Medical Association (BMA) collaborated with LCD4A to check the impact of long COVID within the medical occupation. Over 600 doctors were surveyed from December 2022 to January 2023. Survey results indicated that 18% of respondents could not work. Although 57% were full-time employees before illness onset, just one in three continued; 49% lost income on account of long COVID. The survey also highlighted that almost all doctors lacked protection of their workplaces.

Shockingly, respiratory protective equipment was available for a low proportion of doctors. Only 11% and 16% of respondents had access to FFP2 and FFP3 respirators, respectively, when infected. The report also underscored that GP surgeries were excluded from the formal National Health Service (NHS) supply chain, forcing industrial acquisition of apparatus. Charities offering financial support to doctors have increased in demand.

The Royal Medical Benevolent Fund helped 11% more doctors during 2022-23 than usual. The Cameron Fund has recorded a 67% increase in inquiries for assistance in the primary half of 2023 in comparison with 2022. One respondent remarked that long COVID had had a big toll on their lives, sense of well-being, and skill to perform day by day activities and that life had turn into miserable, with day by day being a struggle.

Long COVID, an occupational disease

LCD4A and the BMA have set out the next demands – 1) financial support for healthcare personnel and doctors with long COVID, 2) recognition of long COVID as an occupational disease, 3) improved access to health services, 4) increased workplace protection, and 5) higher support to return to work. Likewise, the Trade Union Congress in March 2023 called for long COVID to be recognized as an occupational disease.

Nevertheless, the Department of Health and Social Care, acknowledging the debilitating impact of long COVID, revealed there was insufficient evidence to contemplate long COVID as an occupational disease, given the uncertainties about its definition, symptoms, and fluctuating nature. Doctors have faced barriers to medical assessment, investigation, and treatment, and nearly 50% of the respondents had not been referred to a protracted COVID clinic. Several respondents reported being gaslighted by their colleagues.

The NHS has committed £314 million to support individuals with long COVID. Nevertheless, this just isn’t sufficient for doctors. Fearnley remarked that doctors were being managed with out a support system after risking their lives and being disabled. She expressed the necessity for increased efforts to support healthcare employees and added that doctors had stepped up when the country needed them, and it was not right for the country to step away now of their time of need.