This episode of The Conversation’s In Depth Out Loud podcast features a report from two doctors on the frontline of the second wave of coronavirus in Liverpool.
Tom Wingfield, an infectious diseases physician at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Liverpool, and Miriam Taegtmeyer, professor of global health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, describe what it’s like for healthcare workers who continue to put their lives and those of their families on the line.
They describe arriving at work to face daily, sometimes dangerous, staff shortages but also seeing the inherent resourcefulness of NHS healthcare workers. Some specialist colleagues have expanded their care to cover or lead COVID-19 wards. Other hospital doctors have “upskilled” to look after people needing ventilators. What is unclear, they say, is how long they can keep stepping up.
They set out the problems they and their colleagues are facing around the country, some lessons we might be able to learn from the first wave, and some positive developments which will make the future a little brighter.
You can read the text version of this in-depth article here. The audio version is read by Megan Clement and produced by Gemma Ware.
This story came out of a project at The Conversation called Coronavirus Insights supported by Research England.
The music in In Depth Out Loud is Night Caves, by Lee Rosevere.
Tom Wingfield is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, and an honorary research associate at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Tom Wingfield receives funding from: the Wellcome Trust, UK (209075/Z/17/Z); the Medical Research Council, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and Wellcome Trust (Joint Global Health Trials, MR/V004832/1), the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK; and the Swedish Health Research Council, Sweden. Tom is also a consultant for the World Health Organisation
Miriam Taegtmeyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.