Got it.
So could you just start by saying your name and what your current position is and possibly also what your previous what your connection to Oxford was?
Okay. So my name is Sheila Johnson and I'm currently an effort to doctor in high dependency unit for surgical patients in Derby.
And I studied medicine at Oxford. Brilliant.
Okay. So without giving me your entire life history, but going back as early as you like.
How did you first get interested in medicine?
I mean, I think I read that you you actually studied a basic science test before you went on to train in medicine.
Well, so when I was I, I'm from Ireland. And if you can tell from the accent and in school I was really interested in science.
Medicine was on the cards, but I ended up doing a science degree biochemistry thinking that kind of the research life was what I wanted to do.
And I did a master's and a Ph.D. in Scotland and and then kind of realised that I liked research, but I liked people more.
So I applied for medicine and very fortunately got into Oxford, so did as a graduate.
Which is accelerated somewhat to 40 years instead of six.
Yeah. And what was the subject of your Ph.D.? Distant cancer immunology.
And and so having done your Ph.D., what made you think that you did want to go into clinical practice rather than staying in research,
which might which obviously did already have a strong medical angle to it?
I think when the researchers who I kind of most looked up to and respected in my department were all doctors,
and they just had a completely different view view point to the utility of research.
And I found that they kind of this all made for a much better science.
So part of it going into medicine was that, you know,
I felt like I could do better research and ask more interesting research questions with more kind of clinical impetus.
And and that's kind of what happened. So it worked out very well.
And so you were.
Well, tell me a little bit about your experience of being a medical student at Oxford, having having already got so far with your research career.
I guess I can't I don't know how to compare it to anything else, but I really enjoyed.
Yes, I guess part of the reason they were applying to Oxford was the kind of the
small group teaching and the kind of very small communities within the colleges.
And that kind of all played up to to what I expected. I was really lucky.
I was in Saint Hughes and I worked there as well as a junior dean.
And we just had a lovely gang of medics, both the graduates and the undergrads.
We all got on really well, really supportive and headed by John Morris, who was our kind of head teacher,
who was wonderful and really enjoyable, quite, quite difficult at times, you know, very challenging.
But just just amazing. Really, really enjoyed it. Hmm.
And do I have to talk to you on LinkedIn?
You. You're quite sporty as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I played a lot of hockey growing up and Gaelic football, which is kind of an Irish national sport,
and then came and played those in Oxford as well and then also took up playing rugby
and which was a brief but brutal but a really good experience because I think,
you know, one thing I hadn't realised about going to Oxford was the I guess the privilege you get of access to,
particularly with the rugby getting to play in Twickenham. And I didn't know about that and it just that's incredible, you know, it's incredible.
So you were in the blues team? Yes. Yeah. So, yeah.
Yeah. And you also got interested or concerned about the inequality in access to medical education.
Yeah. So I think that was actually something that really came about during COVID times.
And it wasn't till after COVID times. Okay. It's something I had when I came to Oxford.
I didn't know anybody here and I didn't know how to play the game to get in.
And I think, you know, one thing I've learned since is that there are generations of families who come here and they have the inside scoop on,
you know, what the interview looks like, how to perform, you know, how to deal with the questions.
And I, I guess, like I was a bit of a bumbling fool because I didn't know any of that,
but I managed to stumble in and then thought about, you know, how can I help the people coming behind me?
I think coming from Ireland, I'd kind of initially thought, you know,
I'm sure there are lots of people at home who would really like the opportunity to come to somewhere like Oxford and, you know, can I help them?
And I think through family and friend networks, I had helped a lot of people to prepare, excuse me for interviews and help them to understand,
you know, what the college life and the university life looks like just to prepare them.
And I thought about kind of trying to formalise that and into something.
But, you know, medicine is such a heavy degree that there was kind of no time actually when I don't maybe I'm jumping the gun here,
but when kind of COVID, when everything shut down and I had a bit more time to look into things I'd been putting on the backburner for a while.
And I think it was also around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd.
And, you know, you got more time to reflect on, you know, like what?
What can I actually do to be helpful?
And one of the things I had been doing was tutoring as people how to get into medical school, how to get into Oxford.
And then I had the idea that, you know, I looked into the data and the stats from Oxford Medical School and found this,
you know, gross inequality that I guess we'd all always known about but hadn't put numbers.
I hadn't put numbers to and, you know, found out things that if you you know, if you're a white applicant,
you have a one in five chance of getting in if you're an African-American or African descent, black applicant, one in 13.
And there's just systematic kind of issues with that.
So I decided to set up. An organisation to help people from underrepresented organisations with underrepresented backgrounds, with their, you know,
from the application point, you know how to do a good application, how to write a good and personal statement and then helps with the interview.
I guess we were biased towards getting people into Oxford because we wanted to kind of enrich our
community and diversify and our medical school and just ended up kind of again bumbling along,
emailed every state school in Oxford to invite them to come to this free course.
And where we got, you know, maybe 60 or 70 medical students at Oxford,
medical students who were happy to be teachers and did a, gosh, dozens of virtual tuition programs, mock interviews.
We did some clinical skills courses up in the jail.
We did workshops for work experience in some of the GP's around Oxford and we just got amazing buy in from everyone.
So I think it was something that needed to be done and needed to happen and but and kind of finally had the,
I guess the space and it was the right time to make these things and it's still going on really strong.
So the organisation is called Step into Oxford and currently we have a guy called Remi Sheehan,
he's in St Peter's College who's the president and he's doing absolutely wonderfully
and so it's really exciting and it's great to see that it's still going really strong.
And you know, it's my, my, my friend Sana. Sana Ali.
She was in Summer Somerville. It was. Yeah, she ended up and she helped me and so we, I reached out to her in the early stages and the two of us,
I think kind of set it up and made it what it is together. And we're both still very involved and, and very, I guess, just so proud and so chuffed.
And is it still is it still too early to see whether any of these students that you've tutored have have got places?
Yeah. So I mean the the year before so to 2021 intake 70 of our applicants and so 70 of our two to TS got places in Oxford so we don't see.
Yeah well there's a there's a I should a fantastic we we've managed to convince the admission board for medicine that we wanted.
So where we really wanted to make an impact was the shortlisted candidates who would have come from state schools,
who wouldn't have had and kind of access to all of the previous questions and interviews and things like that.
Because one thing I learned was that the private schools and the public schools have, you know,
Google drives with information on all of the interviewers, the questions that get asked.
And unfortunately, Oxford being a bit traditional, you know, and maybe a bit unimaginative, has the same questions year after year after year.
And of course, students who come from those schools and students whose families have been in Oxford for generations have,
you know, unsolicited access to that step up.
So we were trying to level the playing field a bit,
and we did a 120 interview workshops with shortlisted candidates, and I think about 120 and 7070 got in.
So, you know, some of our some of our work, you know, some of our impact is in Oxford at the moment.
So that's really exciting for continuity as well because hopefully those guys will get involved and kind of continue it on.
That's fantastic. Yes. And so I should we need to take a slight step back now because I hadn't realised all that went on.
Well, I know of COVID. Okay, so let's go back to the good bit.
So can you remember when you first became aware that there was an unusual outbreak of infection in China
and and how soon you became alert that that might be something that was going to affect the whole world?
I guess it had been. I remember being back in Ireland and it had been on the news and and the newscaster was talking about it.
There was no real. But people kept saying, oh, this is so far away, it's not going to affect us.
And and then I kind of the kind of really key part for me where I realised this is this is really big deal,
this is really going to affect me was on the day that the medical school closed because at the time,
you know, we had been hearing that I think at the time there were maybe only dozens of cases reported per day.
And, you know, now we know that there were actually hundreds more than that.
But just at the time, they weren't able to to test to test it.
Are you talking about in the U.K. or in the U.K.? You have jumped over now.
And I remember sitting in a dermatology lecture on a Friday afternoon and test MacPherson,
who's the head of dermatology, was teaching us about all these different types of skin cancer.
And then people were just there was all these whispers and talking and something was going on.
It was just like a wave of kind of chatter in the room. And she she turned around, Dr. MacPherson, and said, What's happening?
And the head of the medical school had emailed to say the medical school was shutting.
And every it just it just everyone was just shocked because I guess we had thought about people had thought about.
There'd been mutterings in the news about lockdowns coming in. But that seemed all seemed very far away and very distant.
And, you know, none of us really knew people who had COVID at the time, so we didn't feel directly impacted.
And, you know, a lot of the narrative at the time was that young people were going to be safe.
So we weren't that worried. But then all of a sudden, you know,
our plans for the next year and a half kind of got thrown up in the air and we didn't know what
was going to happen or where we were going to be or how long the medical school would shut for.
But, you know, at the same time,
we absolutely knew and it was important that or more important that our educators would who would be the people in hospitals helping people should,
of course, prioritise prioritise that. That's what it really when it became so real, because that was a couple of weeks before lockdown.
And so I think it hit us very much earlier because our day to day life changed in one email.
Yep. And you were at that point, did you just say how about halfway through your third year of four?
Is that it? Was that right? Yeah, just over it was March, just over and just about halfway through that year.
Yeah. So how would it be if lockdown if the medical school closing hadn't happened?
How would your last two years have played out? What would you have been doing?
I guess the kind of it all ended up the same, but the means to get there was quite different because.
And so medical school closed for a few months.
If it hadn't closed, we would have just continued on our lectures and continued our course as it was.
Which and in that third year of four, which is fifth year for the undergrad equivalents,
we do six eight week placements in various different specialities.
But our. So you're actually seeing patients. Yeah.
Yeah. You're you're in and out of the hospital or clinics or GP going, going to and from lectures and you know,
it's pretty and we have exams at the end for at the end of every block.
So it's pretty intense, it's a pretty intense year.
And then we would have had our finals much earlier than we did and gone on an elective, which usually means,
you know, ten weeks in the sun somewhere pretending to do medicine and having basically a holiday.
And but of course, none of that materialised. And which is fine, too, in a way.
We ended up those placements were shortened and kind of rushed through.
We obviously we still had to meet the minimum clinical standards of a medical school and then there was no kind of elective or downtime,
but that was just the way it had to had to be.
So you were you were still receiving all your lectures and so on, but online, is that how it was working?
So when we came back, quite a lot of them were online and exams online as well.
Yeah. Strange phenomenon but needs most at least we got we still got the bedside kind of clinical teaching,
but of course it was a lot, there was a lot, there was less. And you have the freedom.
You know, as a medical student, do you have kind of free rein of a ward or a department?
And obviously, you know, you can just come and go asking.
You know, you obviously ask people in charge that it's okay for you to be there.
But once you get that seal of approval, you know, you have such a liberty and privilege to go to people and take histories and do examinations.
That kind of.
Went because we had a lot less patient facing time for patient safety because obviously COVID hasn't gone away and it's still it's still present.
And and when we were kind of training, we didn't have the all the vaccines and herd immunity that we have now.
And so there were still people very sick. And we had to be mindful of that and mindful not to get COVID ourselves,
because I guess we were we couldn't we felt that we were rushing so much through the rest of the course.
We didn't want to get sidetracked by being unwell as well.
And so there's a lot of things to think about. But at some point,
there was a call for medical students to to volunteer to to help with various
aspects of of the care of patients and some of the research that was going on.
So how did that materialise? I mean, how did you get there?
I think, you know, when the day medical school closed, we all kind of thought.
A bit of a break because.
Because that year that we were in is super intense.
But I think, you know, a couple of days of doing nothing and you're kind of looking to see what can you do?
What can you do? And I we're we're probably a cohort of people who are kind of willing to help or, you know, wanting to to help anyway.
So then the hospital kind of went into emergency mode and departments started changing strategies and realised that they needed bodies to do jobs.
And so the medical school, I think kind of co-ordinated by Helen McNally and.
Started saying, if anyone can help, can they let us know?
And basically people emailed in and then it was a bit of a lottery as to where you were assigned to.
And I was really lucky because I got assigned about 20 or maybe 25 of us and got assigned to the emergency department, which we felt.
You thought that was lucky? Yeah. What? I mean, like, emergency medicine is something I'm quite interested in.
And so, like, you know, just a great opportunity to be in that environment and your,
you know, your you really are at the front door of people coming in.
And we had many different roles. And I think, you know, we volunteered to go along, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into, but just,
I guess, like happy to be able to help even if it was just getting teas and coffees and whatever was needed to be done.
So. Is but 25 of us and we did various roles from kind of being front of house, you know,
they had to have people at the front door directing and patients and but and largely asking visitors not to come in.
And because at the time there was a zero visitor policy pretty much except for children.
And and we had the emergency department was split into the respiratory side, which anybody with any respiratory symptoms went to.
And that was kind of where we were based and we helped with and kind of the emergency
trolleys which have all of the intubation equipment when you need to ventilate someone.
And we helped to stock all of those.
We helped when there was somebody who was very unwell, we would kind of just be a body to get things, help people on and off,
which is putting on and off the equipment and putting on and off their PPE, helping them to be safe.
How much PPE do you have to wear? So we so we at the time, we were never in you know, we were never doing the intubating.
The people who were doing the intubating were in full level three PPE with everything that you could possibly find with plastic,
full gowns, full masks. And we were in aprons, masks and gloves.
And if we if we did have to go closer to kind of an aerosol generating procedure or something that could possibly spread viral particles,
we would have had to put on the foil cap gown and ffp3 masks, the really tight ones, goggles, everything.
But that was kind of pretty rare for for us, fortunately.
And and yeah. Because they're very warm.
Very, very warm. And at some so sometimes when there'd be some, like, for example,
at the time there wasn't a lot of there wasn't an evidence basis for how to manage the COVID patients, the very unwell COVID patients.
And I remember that the kind of statistics at the time were that people who were intubated
and so putting the tube in their throat and using the machine to breathe for them,
they had a 50% chance of coming out of that. And that is just a phenomenal number.
And because there were no treatments at the time, we didn't have you know, now there's a whole battery of things we can give.
And just remember that. So the ICU team would come down to do the Intubations in there and you'd be helping them put on their full space suits.
And I'd just remember this man, and he was only 61.
He had four, four kids at home. One of them was quite young. We'd be like seven or eight and.
His oxygen saturations were 58% or something crazy.
You know, you and me above 95, you know, and it was crazy.
And they just said, we're going to have to intubate you. And he said, What are the chances of me coming out of this?
And they said, 5050. And it was just awful to watch, you know, and and we had to go in and help with various bits.
So you're, you know, you're in all of this PPE and you're covered.
You'd be he can't see your face. He can't see that you're trying to support him, even though, you know, we couldn't do anything medical.
But, you know, sometimes just being in the room and giving a smile, then you can't.
Exactly. You can't. He can't see it. And and I just can't imagine how.
I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for him and for his family. And but that was the that was the no visitor route.
They couldn't they couldn't come in and and we couldn't show him really much.
We were trying to make up for that deficit. But, you know, you know, at the same time, there's it's a safety thing.
And but gosh. Yeah. And what sort of length of shifts were you doing?
It depended.
So I think the longest we did was maybe 12 or 13 hours because we would do nights as well, which I think for a medical student seemed quite excessive.
But, you know. They were it wasn't very hard.
And, you know, many, many students stay up till seven or 8:00 in the morning partying.
So I think they can stay up at the same time, kind of just pottering around the the.
And and how long did that continue? How long did you then continue to do that work?
I did that from April until August because the medical school reopened, reopened then in August.
But also other kind of jobs are opportunities opened up.
And I was very fortunate because one of my and he was a mentor and called Donald Scully.
He's a neuro neurology registrar now.
He had helped me with some tutoring stuff in college, and he was a research and academic clinical fellow.
And he he was in a group of people who started to kind of had their eye on the ball very early on.
All right. Could you just repeat from he was an academic clinical fellow because you froze briefly.
Oh, sorry. Excuse me. And he was he was an academic clinical fellow.
And he was part of a research group of people who very early on had their eye on the ball in terms of the importance
of getting blood and samples from people with COVID to understand the immunology response and of course,
for looking at various treatments down the line. So he roped me into that group and I still I'm still working with them actually.
And and over what we used to do was have clinics where we would people who had COVID
and it was health care workers and then eventually medical students and patients,
we would go and bleed patients, take blood from patients on the ward who had COVID,
enter them into the research trial, look at their various immune cells in their blood.
And it's been sorry I lost you again when you said, look at there.
It stopped for a moment. I don't know if this is me or you. I've closed pretty much everything else that could be taking up capacity.
But never mind, let's just carry on. And so just go back to what you were looking at in the blood.
I'll just also close things down. I don't actually have that much up and.
We were looking at immune cells and various different types of immune cells, but also our samples,
which were kind of the the blood that we were collecting was kind of a profile of how the
body responds to COVID and that they served as positive controls for the vaccine trial.
And so they had huge, huge implications.
And again, at the time, I just kind of went along with, you know, without having kind of the burden of having to study and exams,
you kind of just got involved with anything and anywhere that you could be helpful or useful.
And again, even if it was just making teas and coffees, you know, they have power beyond measure, especially in the middle of the night and.
Yeah. Hmm. And that.
So that project was called Optic. Is that right? Yeah.
The very one. Yes. That was with them just as well.
Just put me in proximity with the most amazing people like Susie Dungey and Paul Kleinerman and Eddie Barrens.
He's just, you know, Jemmy. It's just amazing scientists and just amazing people who've been so helpful to me since since we've kind of and,
you know, that initial kind of urgency of getting all those samples and,
you know, realising that they were the research they were doing was going to have global impact and they kind of brought you along with them.
It was phenomenal. And I'm so working with with them now and still very close with Susie, which is wonderful.
And we're just published on paper at the moment, so it's kind of been a long, long involvement that kind of came from from nothing.
And I mean, did you have a sort of title within the project? What was your what was your role?
I had a few titles, and I initially just kind of started off just as a phlebotomist, essentially collecting the blood.
And but then our so our senior nurse, Lizzie, she who was kind of in charge,
but there wasn't because it was so new, there wasn't like formal job titles.
So she then had to apply for her job and serve out her notice for her other job for a couple of months.
So I ended up taking over as kind of project manager for the clinics, so and I recruited a lot of medical students to come and work as Phlebotomists,
which was wonderful training for them as for us as well, and ran those clinics for a few months and just kind of organised organisation.
It was, it was an administrative job essentially and just making sure everyone turned up and recruiting the participants to take home as well.
But I mean you have lab skills from your Ph.D., so? So were you able to deploy those skills as well?
I would have if asked, but thankfully I wasn't.
And I guess the so the the the the principal investigators, the CDC, the is the polls, they have their own scientists in the lab doing those.
Now, that being said, for the SO in medical school, at the end of it,
you often go on elective which as I mentioned earlier on is a holiday and you could do medicine abroad.
Usually ours got cancelled because of COVID, which is it is what it is.
But I got to go and work in the lab to kind of process the samples that we had been sending to the lab.
So I kind of got to see the whole chain from collection to processing to, you know, analysing the data and putting the graph on the page.
So it was kind of a really involved experience. So you went from being essentially a helper to being really part of the research team?
Yeah, I hope so. I mean, that they're such lovely people.
They always made you feel so included and involved and.
But I think yeah, I think I think I and I'd like to think I contributed to that and I really enjoyed it.
So. It was a very rewarding experience.
So after all that experience, what do I mean?
How do you envisage your career planning it, panning out from from now on?
Did you always intend to go back to research but with a, you know, a clinically informed perspective?
Yeah. And what are you doing now? I think I'm.
I. When I started medicine, I was kind of thinking, oh, this would be a better way for me to get grants,
you know, because the medical, you know, I'll be more informed from the clinical side of you.
But actually, the more time I've spent on the ward, the more I've realised that.
I want to spend time on the wards, not in the lab at the moment.
So the foundation program that I'm doing is an academic foundation program.
So I'm currently on my academic block where I have about 50% time dedicated to research time, and I'm doing a meta analysis on paracetamol in surgery.
And it's, although it's quite interesting, I'd much rather be at the surgery, you know, helping with the medicine point of view.
So I think it's actually made me realise that I think the clinical side of things
is much more interesting to me than the is where I want to spend my time.
Of course I'd always be drawn to the research questions and you know, what's the evidence for given treatments?
But I think in terms of using up my time,
it definitely has changed my perception that I had assumed that I would follow an academic path the whole way.
And the wonderful thing about the NHS is that they do have a pathways for academic minded people because unfortunately in Ireland they don't.
But now I am. It's kind of changed everything because now I'm I don't need to do one of those programs.
So, you know, I don't need to, to be in the UK and yeah.
So a lot has has kind of changed because the. But when we were for example in working in it in during lockdown you know we,
we got we for a lot of the patients they didn't have they couldn't have anyone coming to see them and you were kind of the only person for them.
So we just we got you know, I said earlier on that, you know, when we as medical students, you can kind of roam around the wards and talk to people.
That's, of course, in and around their other commitments.
And patients can be very busy people because they have, you know, the ward round coming to them.
They have people from other specialities coming to them. The nurses are coming to them all the time.
They have family members and with them, you know, quite a lot of the day, whereas now a lot of these patients were stable.
With COVID, they couldn't have anyone come to see them. They didn't need that much medical help, you know, so they were just needing company.
And I think it was the first time that we'd really, really gotten, you know, hours of talking to two patients.
And and that was kind of, I guess, the first time that I really saw, like,
what what you could do and like how important kind of communication and even just chatting and listening can have four patients.
That's kind of something that's really informed my clinical practice now.
And I think part of the reason that I really enjoy the the talking and treating the patient part of being
a doctor and I've kind of made less room for the research part which takes you away from the wards.
And but I kind of really put it down to that time that we had in the respiratory,
the respiratory head that kind of I guess you kind of started talking at length to the patients,
you know, initially kind of you just thought, oh gosh, they have nobody, you know, they've no one.
I'll go and talk to them. So it's nearly an obligation.
But then, you know, you just you just it became part of your your day in your job and your and it was so like whether the patients liked it or not,
we really enjoyed it. I'm sure they did.
They did, too. Who's this mad Irish woman back again.
But you know, it was. Yeah, so that's definitely changed my and I guess it changed my practice,
which has kind of led to a change in my philosophy about my plans and medical specialism.
Are you planning to pursue? So I have a couple that I'm quite interested in.
So emergency medicine is still one that I that I quite like.
And so I'm hoping to do some of that next year. I just to, you know, help me rule in or rule out because, you know,
emergency medicine seems really cool as a medical student, but it could be very different as a doctor.
So I want to check that out. And then I also quite like I'm kind of the intensive care side of things and having I guess helped with a
lot of intensive care type work in respiratory need and then doing a placement in intensive care as well.
Like the serious things. Mm. Clearly. Yes.
So and. Yeah.
Just going back to you personally, what what was it like living through those early lockdown periods?
Where were you actually staying at the time? Were you in college accommodation or did you have a flat?
So I had a flat in college and because I worked for them.
But at the when kind of this threat of lockdown was coming up and my boyfriend and I made a decision to live together to kind of be in one household,
and now I did have some duties to do in college that I had to go back and forth for.
But they were kind of within my my job role and it was approved and and all above above board.
And but it was it was it was a different.
I don't think anyone would believe you. You know, it's like something out of a movie.
And when you see Carolee Stritch, just barren, totally empty.
I just think that's, you know, a memory that I have of people queuing up outside Tesco and nobody else around.
It was like a different life. It doesn't. I can't believe I lived that time, you know, that that time existed.
And but I think we were again, we're quite lucky in the sense that's in my boyfriend's house where there's a nice group of people, very support,
like people you would be happy to be locked down with because, you know,
a lot of them were working from home and couldn't leave the house at all without reason, of course.
And and it was just so insular.
And I guess for some, I felt really lucky that we had kind of people and kind of an atmosphere.
I couldn't, you know, if I had lived on my own for that whole time, I think that would have been really, really hard.
So I really empathised with people who who couldn't, who couldn't, who didn't have the kind of opportunity that I had to get out.
But we and as a house as well, we just we tried to do kind of help out other people where we could.
So and there was an organisation that used to sign people up to deliver groceries to people who were kind of who couldn't leave the house.
Yeah. So we used to do that. Was it for the Oxford Hope I think was the organisation we worked for.
So that was a really and I guess something we all kind of these were the kind of people I was living with,
lovely people, you know, I was very lucky and big cooking sessions and baking and some some yoga.
These things that, you know, I've long forgotten would be glad to never do again, but to pass the time, you know.
And it was so strange to support your wellbeing and yet it was just a different existence,
you know, and it just doesn't seem to marry up with my current life, which is so hectic.
And so I think, you know, in a way, the lockdown, you know, it gave people gave us breathing space and gave us time to reflect and pink and,
you know, a lot of things I'd been interested in that I hadn't been able to pursue because I was so busy.
I finally got some headspace too to think about and I guess like a step into Oxford as the product of that,
because I was doing a lot of running around a marathon, kind of with a with a view to help raise awareness for kind of social injustices
and asked people to pledge time as opposed to money to educating themselves.
And kind of when I was doing all that running,
that's when I got my time to think and my time to just unwind a little bit because it can be a bit like a hamster wheel at medical school.
There's no stopping to see. And it's pretty it's pretty full on.
So and in a way, kind of having nothing to do or kind of having.
Time to to just take have a bit of a slower pace of life.
Was. And.
I want to say welcomed because of course, it's on the background of just horrendous events.
Nearly everybody I've spoken to has this issue that actually they had tremendous
opportunities for new research or other kinds of opportunity as a result of the pandemic.
But it's very hard to say that because it was so awful for so many people.
But it's it's a genuine feeling. So don't feel embarrassed.
No. And I think, you know, a lot of my guilt is like I can pin, you know,
a feeling of like elation to then seeing something awful and being like, oh, no, you know, it's me.
I remember. And getting getting and getting involved in the the kind of the COVID research and getting the
text from Donald and being really excited and looking up all of their supervisors and thinking,
wow, they're so famous, you know, they're amazing. And then, you know, then straight away,
my kind of elation was curtailed because we had an awful situation where this lovely lady in the
emergency department that she had been made and of life and her children were coming in to see her.
And three daughters ran in.
And we were we were kind of front of house and we were saying, Oh, excuse me, who are you and who are you here to see and what's happening?
And they said that they were told they could come in to see their mother before she passed away.
And we were thinking, that's strange because usually three people are never allowed in.
So then we went and found the sister in charge. And as it transpired,
the sister who had been in charge in our previously had said all the doctors could come in and the
new sister in charge said they couldn't and they'd driven two or 3 hours to come and see the mom.
And I had to go back and tell them I'm I'm just so sorry, but you're you're not allowed in.
And John, they were not any of them. One of them.
One was already in, you see. And then, you know, so straightaway your you felt very happy about something.
And then the real the realisation of the product of your joy is playing out in front of you and this beautiful family.
And they were so nice about it, which made it worse.
They were saying, Oh, well, you're doing everything you can for our mom, and oh, it's all you know.
So a lot of it, you know, I think that's why my I have like a gut reaction every time I say something positive about the COVID kind of lockdown.
I got all of these memories of these times where, you know, kind of joy was quickly washed,
like quickly hampered down by the reality that I guess we got just we just saw.
And in in our kind of role any day and every every day and all the time was just very am.
Something we hadn't experienced I don't think anyone had experienced before.
Even the staff who had worked in the emergency department for 30 years had said they had never seen anything like this.
And so, yeah, so, you know, some really good experiences during lockdown, but with the caveat that I, I lament that they're under the,
you know, they're, they're kind of parallel to a lot of the difficulties and that other people, other people felt.
So I guess I'm reticent to be to a to a joyous and yeah.
Understood. And how to what extent did you and your housemates fear catching the virus itself?
Were you doing the full washing all the groceries thing or.
Yeah, yeah. So we we did everything. We did everything.
And luckily we were all healthy people.
But I think our, our main concern was giving it to each other and especially myself and one of the girls in the house.
She was a nurse. We had a full strip clean before we entered the house.
You know, there was a process,
there was a a box for to put in your dirty scrubs and a box to our place to wash your hands before you accessed anybody.
And no one was allowed come near you until you showered.
And we were so careful. And but and I think that was the right way to be just to protect other people.
And because I think as well, at the beginning of and even now, there are some people who,
for whatever reason, get really unwell and we don't understand that.
So I think it's it's you know, it was right at the time we were washing all of our plastic was this, um, which again just seemed so surreal.
And what about your your extended family? Did the pandemic affect them at all?
Yeah, I think I think it was hardest for my dad.
And so he was shielding and because of his age.
So he couldn't leave the house for in Ireland, they had they called it cocooning and he couldn't leave the house for months.
And as a very social man and he was very involved in the community, he kind of runs a charity in the local area,
which and I'm sure his absence was acutely felt by everybody who really didn't realise how much work he does.
And he's just a, a, you know, a social man and not used to having to stay at home and would often cause, I think,
roadblocks on our tiny little boring little roads because he just anyone who'd pass in a car, he'd stop them for a chat.
It's the first time there was ever a traffic jam in the area.
But, you know, and I think we have. So my sister lives in Melbourne and she has she's married and she,
she now has two beautiful little children and we were unable to see them for kind of two years.
And we're lucky in that we usually see each other at least once a year. And my nephew Owen was born without and none of us saw him until he was over.
He was a year and a half, about before we saw him.
And that's quite hard for my parents as well, because they're, you know, they're they're babies, you know, and they they couldn't see them.
And but in a way, you know, we're lucky to be able to you know, we talk every week on Zoom and Insta, on Instagram, Facebook, everything.
And so but just that there is a big difference to seeing people and being able to give them a cuddle.
Especially when they're as cute as my little niece and nephew, Owen.
And so I think that those are the kind of the two most difficult bits not being able to see people.
And, you know, we weren't unique in that. There was a lot of people had had those issues.
Yeah. Well, I think I let's get to the end of my list of questions and we well I mean I haven't asked question which sort of covered it already,
but I'll ask it again just in case you come out with a slightly different answer.
But the the experience of living and working through COVID has changed your attitude to
your approach to what you do and other things you'd like to see change in the future.
And I think it has. I think so a couple of a couple of things.
Things for me kind of professionally it's changed my.
It's changed my kind of direction of career because I think I had thought that I would be very research driven.
But actually quite a lot of money, even though I did a lot of research and a lot of interesting,
amazing research during the kind of lockdown period, I also got the chance to do a lot of kind of what I thought was medicine.
And in chatting and talking to patients and realising how much I enjoyed being on the shop floor, being on the wards.
And that's changed my trajectory a bit because that's where I want.
I want to be on the wards.
I want to be with patients, which means that I'm not going to be doing as much research, which is kind of an insight I wasn't expecting.
But now I have am. What was the rest of the question?
It was about anything you might want to see change in the future. Oh, gosh, that's really broad.
And it's an.
I mean, you're obviously interested in how medicine is practised.
Not. Not just, you know. Yeah.
One of my aspirations for a medicine being practised or how it should be practised have been informed by my current work,
which is that we don't have enough staff and as opposed to go for it.
And I think actually, you know,
some of that can be explained by we have kind of a mass exodus of doctors and nurses and people not interested in working in hospitals.
They've left to sunnier climates. And as soon as lockdown was lifted and you know, you have to wonder if, you know,
the treatment of doctors and nurses and other health care staff during that time has contributed to that and leaves us in a situation now where,
you know, we can't get enough doctors to fill the rota. And that's really scary.
It's really worrying and really worrying. TIME And now there's a lot of discussions about strikes.
And today the Royal College of Nurses are striking from half seven this morning to half eight tonight.
And that's going to have its unprecedented first time in 100 years or something like that.
And, you know, you have to you know, I suspect in some ways maybe incalculable that, you know,
the kind of pandemic and the treatment of health care professionals and I guess like it was all well and good to be clapped for,
but that's not really enough.
But I feel like that's how a lot of people think or feel, and they've either left or now they're striking.
And this is this doctors talking about striking in the new year.
And so and the whole country is striking.
It seems so hope. Hopefully people don't need a train or get sick in the near future.
And but I suspect that. Yeah.
The treatment of the health care professionals was really put under scrutiny and was found to be subpar from the government.
And that might be leading to or definitely is contributing to the current kind of staffing shortage crisis.
That's a strong word, but it feels like that when you're the one holding two blips and trying to keep it together.
Great. Thank you very much.