Songbirds and Sirens - Sounds of Recovery from a Pandemic

Liz Ashley talks about the challenges ahead for Medicine and the impact that COVID and treating patients with COVID has had on their mental health.
Liz describes how her experience with COVID and lockdown has changed her perspective on life.

Liz Ashley and I discuss the part of Medicine that is so often overlooked.  Dying and death. 
It is the fear of dying that has caused so much of the panic around the response to COVID.  Liz talks frankly about how she got her own fear in check.

Liz talks candidly about the effect that stopping Healthcare is having in the UK.  Not only is the there the detriment to patients not getting treated, but also a significant impact on the training of doctors.
Liz reflects on the benefits of technology as an aide to Anaesthetist, but that they are not at risk of being replaced by robots anytime soon.
With that in mind, society, politicians, employers and most importantly doctors themselves, need to recognise our true worth.  A clap is not enough. 

In this episode, Liz and I discuss how Medicine has changed over the last decade.  We lament a world where working in medicine was not only hugely rewarding but also fun.
Liz also gives her insightful perspective on the benefits for all in the UK, that having a thriving Private Sector provides and that instead of the UK remaining on of the global leaders in Health, the delayed recovery may, in fact, be a race to the bottom.

Liz Ashley is a Consultant Cardiothoracic Anaesthetist in London.  She discusses her first-hand experience of COVID as the pandemic hit London.  
She describes how the reaction of fear for the NHS, effectively closed a significant part of the healthcare sector and how it feels that the 'powers that be' may have utlised the pandemic as a paralysing agent for the Private Sector.

What next?  How does this pause for medicine shape the future?
In this final part of the interview with Chris Pearce, we look to the future and the opportunities for medical education and humanitarian work.

Chris Pearce talks in-depth about the recovery plan for Orthopaedic Surgery in Singapore. At the peak of the pandemic, the focus correctly was on cancer and urgent trauma surgery.  
At the very start, priority detailed plans were created for resuming elective surgery.  As the number of deaths from COVID-19 starts to disappear, Chris explains how elective surgery in Singapore is soon to be back to full elective operating capacity.

The effects of lockdown on healthcare has resulted in technology being adopted in ways that many have been hoping for.  
As Medics adapt to new ways of working and managing patients Chris Pearce talks openly about the benefits of technology in Medicine.
But there are concerns and he advises caution to ensure that any changes are adopted to facilitate and compliment the doctor's management of patients and not as a replacement.

Singapore was one of the first countries outside China to go into lockdown.  Find out how their previous experience with SARS helped them in the early stages of the pandemic.

Chris Pearce is an Orthopaedic Surgeon based in Singapore.  In this first episode, we chat about how Singapore managed the pandemic in the early stages.

What does recovery from the pandemic sound like? Fear was the instrument that implemented the 'lockdown' but is also the agent paralysing the recovery.

A new and potentially more damaging pandemic has arrived that of the patients who have not been able to get help from doctors desperate to treat them.

Crewed missions to Mars are underway for the next decade.  Yet at this time of unprecedented scientific advances, healthcare is not yet able to reassure patients that they can have a hip replacement performed without fear of COVID-19.

With no vaccine imminent, society needs to find a way to cohabit with the virus, while simultaneously living our lives.