'I didn't feel valued': Doctor says resignation was 'like erasing my existence' amid NHS staff burnout

Dr Ola Abbass takes a deep breath before telling the story of her last shift as an NHS consultant.

“It was a night shift. Intensive care,” she says. “It felt empty. Walking down that corridor felt very alien. I put my coat on and took my bag.

“Removing my name sticker from my draw was like erasing my existence. I opened the door into a dark night. My career in the NHS had come to an end.”

Her voice cracks as she tells this story. It marks the end of something Ola worked so hard for.

Her accent is an intriguing mix of Middle Eastern meets Lancastrian.

Ola was born in Iraq, but war forced her to flee and continue her medical training in Lebanon before coming to the UK to work in the NHS, in the northwest of England.

A wall in her flat is adorned with certificates; Medical science from the University of Baghdad, the Royal College of Glasgow, Faculty of Intensive Care, acute medicine speciality certificates.

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Ola is a very senior, very experienced consultant.

But for the past few years she has also been a very unhappy one.

“You don’t go through all of that to resign,” she tells me.

But in December last year, that is exactly what she did.

“I think the number one thing that was lacking was feeling valued. I just didn’t feel valued.”

But she says her doubts about continuing to work in the NHS set in just after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s almost like you were invisible. It’s almost like you were invisible after doing everything that you did.

“And you start to ask: ‘Is there a way around this? Can we make this better? Where is this going? Can I carry on like this?’

“I’ve got this amazing skill. I’m highly talented. I can save a lot of lives and I can heal a lot of people and I can help them.

“But this is killing me.”

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More than 9,000 doctor vacancies

The NHS is facing the greatest workforce crisis in its 74-year history and one that is creating a serious risk to patient safety.

Record numbers of doctors are resigning with twice as many leaving, saying they need a better work-life balance, than a decade ago.

There are now just over 9,000 doctor vacancies unfilled in the NHS.

It means junior doctors are bearing the brunt of the added pressure on the NHS with a growing number saying they want to quit the health service altogether.

Now, after a ballot of junior doctors by the British Medical Association, thousands of medics will join nurses and ambulance staff in a walkout.

It looks set to place even more pressure on the NHS.

Allesia Waller is a junior doctor working in central London and she has had enough of the NHS and is looking to move abroad to continue her career.

In her first nine months of working in the NHS, Allesia says she was burnt out and had to be signed off for a month.

“Burnout to me was not knowing why I was doing what I was doing anymore and not loving it and actually resenting the people that I’m coming face to face with every day,” she said.

“I just hated going to work. I hated being at work. I didn’t feel like I was doing my job well anymore. I was just disconnected and disillusioned with everything.”

She says her first two years of training, which involved a rolling programme of four-month long placements, left her feeling disillusioned, often having to change hospitals, new departments and ID passes.

“That’s complicated by the fact that the NHS is still using Internet Explorer 11 and these old Windows computers that take about 10 minutes to turn on and log in.

“You may not get your logins for the first two weeks. So, you turn up on the ward round, the consultant’s annoyed because you haven’t got a patient’s blood results because you haven’t got a login yet.

“And I think that contributes to burnout because you’re like, ‘why am I breaking my back when I can’t even do the basics?'”

‘A massive system failure’

A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care told Sky News that there are record numbers of doctors working in the NHS.

But a record number are resigning too.

In England last year, 3,229 doctors resigned from the NHS, with 341 citing burnout as the reason – double what it was a decade ago.

The number of doctors leaving has accelerated rapidly since the pandemic – last year almost 13,000 doctors in the UK gave up their licence – up by 9% on the year before.

One solution to solving the staff shortage is to train more doctors.

The government caps medical student places. In England, 7,500 students got places this year.

Labour says it would double that if it came to power, taxing high earners to pay for it.

But for Ola, who left the NHS last December, it’s too late.

“Losing one consultant is a massive loss for the NHS,” she says.

“Because we are in a time where we are short-staffed across all disciplines, across all specialities and it is alarming when you have someone who has been so dedicated to the job for so long, but having been forced to leave because they just can’t stay in that job anymore.

“It’s a massive system failure.”

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