Dr. John-Paul Byrne:

I would like to go back to the Covid-19 example. We have published a paper that shows that most of the junior doctors to whom we spoke had a positive experience during the first wave, because of the all-hands-on-deck attitude. There were three reasons for this. The distance between the front line and hospital management shrunk. Morale improved because all hands were needed on deck. The closure of services meant that acute services shrunk, in and of themselves, within hospitals. There was simply less to do. There were fewer patients coming in. That was part of their experience as well. In addition, there were simply more staff on the floor all the time during the first wave of Covid-19. If they were going on sick leave, or if they needed cover for a day or two, they had a team of reserves that did not exist before. I am not sure whether it exists now. However, it existed during the first wave of Covid-19. Doctors could be called in to cover people who were out on sick leave or had to isolate. There was an agility within the staffing of the teams there. The general point here is the shrinking of the distance between hospital management and the front line.