Doctors can work flexibly, innovate and transform: Derry GP

It has been a year of challenge and change, a year of disruption and transformation. A year in which the profession was not found wanting, says Dr Tom Black

This NHS that we love and cherish met this challenge. Its staff worked hard and the United Kingdom has learned to appreciate the value of a comprehensive, universal, free at the point of need health service.

At the start of the year, we were dealing with Brexit and Operation Yellowhammer. We talked a lot about pensions and the changes in abortion regulations in NI, implementation of the Romney review and our usual problem in Northern Ireland of tardy pay rises.

We have ongoing concerns in Northern Ireland about the implementation of the O’Hara report and, in particular, the proposal of an individual duty of candour with criminal sanction.

We have engaged with the transformation agenda of the health service in Northern Ireland and we have finally managed to establish a second medical school at Magee College in Derry.

And, then, Covid happened.

They say that professional happiness comes from being very good at something difficult. Our doctors found that professional happiness also comes with managing risk, working very hard and feeling very tired.

Our senior doctors transformed the service in hospitals and in the community. Our junior doctors accepted redeployment and difficult rotas without complaint. And our medical students stepped into the breach with their colleagues on the front line.

Maya Angelou told us, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” And we did.

The year ahead will be very difficult and we in BMA Northern Ireland have a lot of work to do for our members. We need to fight for pay parity throughout the UK. We need to do more work on representation and leadership. We need to integrate civility, kindness and fairness into everything we do. We need to strive to bring the service back to normal, and we need to establish and support our new medical school.

What did we learn this year? We learnt that culture eats strategy for breakfast. We learnt that doctors could work flexibly, innovate and transform when they were allowed to lead the service. We learnt that our NHS and its workers are the foundation of our culture and our society.

WB Yeats cautioned that, ‘too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart’. So let us go forward with civility, kindness and fairness in the coming year. With each other, with our patients and in all our dealings in the National Health Service.