BMJ — Long covid: the doctors’ lives destroyed by an illness they caught while doing their jobs

One doctor tells TheBMJ, “My GP is helpful but what is lacking is a medical professional with a special interest in long covid overseeing my care. I feel I’m having to do it all myself.”
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Others tell TheBMJ they have often struggled for medical colleagues to take their symptoms seriously and have even felt “gaslighted” by them (see case studies). “GPs are being gaslighted themselves, by having hordes of their referrals refused,” another London based GP tells TheBMJ. “GPs are at their wit’s end with what’s happening to them because they have these patients that they’re desperately worried about that they can’t do anything with because nobody will see them. No one will accept their referrals.”
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Harrowing article. I hoped long Covid would serve as an impetus for change but nothing has changed. What comes across clearly in these anecdotes is how you instantly lose all credibility as a person once you report fatigue and brain fog symptoms.
 
I’ve now learnt to avoid NHS doctors in general. I’d heard of gaslighting happening to lay people but I didn’t expect it to happen to a medical professional.​

That there, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of privilege being revoked.

None are safe from it. None.

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Mixed feelings about all this. At a personal level I am genuinely sorry for them, and wish them all the best, etc.

But perhaps a touch less than I do for non-doctors in the same situation.

Look upon your works, O Mighty Medicine, and despair. And then get on with fixing it.
 
Sean said:
I’ve now learnt to avoid NHS doctors in general. I’d heard of gaslighting happening to lay people but I didn’t expect it to happen to a medical professional.​
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I've sometimes wanted a "Don't mistake your two hour lecture on nutrition with my five year master's degree" sign to bring to certain doctor's appointments. But I guess they wouldn't get the reference. :whistle:
 
The doctors with long covid described in this article have my sympathy.

I understand that doctors were the intended subject of the article, but it concerns me that there is barely a mention of the nurses and other staff who were also subjected to the same very high exposure on Covid wards and in other medical and care settings without adequate protection.

Interesting that there is no mention of PEM or ME/CFS.
 
Trish said:
The doctors with long covid described in this article have my sympathy.

I understand that doctors were the intended subject of the article, but it concerns me that there is barely a mention of the nurses and other staff who were also subjected to the same very high exposure on Covid wards and in other medical and care settings without adequate protection.

Interesting that there is no mention of PEM or ME/CFS.
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I've seen very little of doctors in the media in Norway, but long-term sick nurses have been interviewed about not getting compensated for being infected at work :(

Nine out of ten are denied covid-19 as an occupational disease
 
"This is when nothing works. My brain stops working, my mouth stops working, I’ll be mid-sentence and not know where I’m going with it. I’ll be unable to get out of a chair to go to bed because I don’t have the energy to stand up. It’s like your legs are empty.”

'extreme tiredness'(?)
 
No mention of ME/CFS because they want to keep everyone affected by Long Covid irrespective of the symptoms in the frame for an occupational illness with all the financial implications. They know how badly people with ME/CFS are generally dealt with by employers, private insurers, benefits system and don’t want those organisations to see them in the same light. They weren’t successful as is evidenced by this and other reports. But it would appear they are still pressing the case for occupational illness possibly they are considering legal action?
 
NelliePledge said:
But it would appear they are still pressing the case for occupational illness possibly they are considering legal action?
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Not all cases will be clear cut, but you'd think at least the staff who were deployed to Covid wards with inadequate PPE ought to have a very good legal argument, whatever their job title. It wouldn't surprise me if proceedings followed their normal course, though (i.e., justice takes decades because successive governments erect a huge wall of inertia).
 
“GPs are being gaslighted themselves, by having hordes of their referrals refused,”
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Ugh. At least learn the meaning of words before you use them. No wonder MDs don't understand what we mean when we say we're gaslighted when they don't even know what it means. Frankly, until it actually happens to you it's almost impossible to understand.

Zero recognition that this is an old problem. No acknowledgement that patients have been complaining about this forever. They're saying the same things we're maligned and attacked for, but they're either still oblivious to it, or unable to say it. I find it hard to have sympathy here. I have great empathy, I understand what they are going to through, but the problem is entirely in the medical profession and even those failed by it can't seem to find the courage to lay the blame where it should.

Yes, this is all political. But it is medical politics, not government politics. Without the medical profession's full complicity in this disaster, it would never have happened. None of this will change until medicine changes. It all happened as a choice, motivated and purposeful. Say it, damnit, or you're all stuck in this nightmare with us for the long run.
 
NelliePledge said:
No mention of ME/CFS because they want to keep everyone affected by Long Covid irrespective of the symptoms in the frame for an occupational illness with all the financial implications.
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Exactly. This strategy of trying to dissociate themselves from us (lepers) is not going to work. The numbers affected are huge, the financial implications would be gargantuan.
 
“GPs are at their wit’s end with what’s happening to them because they have these patients that they’re desperately worried about that they can’t do anything with because nobody will see them. No one will accept their referrals.”

I noticed on some of the ME/CFS clinics that they were not taking further referrals. As many of them are also LC clinics I wonder if this is why. ie they are being inundated with requests for LC patients.
 
This appears to be the cover story for some BMJ magazine.

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Although I don't agree their lives were destroyed by Long Covid. They were destroyed by their own profession's denial and failure with Long Covid. Denial has consequences. Consequences that have been denounced for decades. This is just a continuation of the same denial and discrimination.

There was even a recent study showing little difference between Influenza and COVID in terms of long-term illness. The only difference here is far, far more infections, even mass reinfections, which have been enabled and encouraged by the medical profession. All of which was so predictable that thousands of us did predict it.

The responsibility here is as significant as what the fossil fuel industry did to cause and enable climate change in the self-interested pursuit of profit. This is not a natural phenomenon, it is the product of human choices. The illness may have been triggered by the virus, but the destruction of lives is a wholly human failure.
 
Reply: Doctors’ lives destroyed by Long Covid: There is an overlap between long covid and ME/CFS
Alexis Gilbert consultant in health protection, patient with severe long covid

It is important to point out the overlap between long covid and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), as highlighted in a recent Nature paper. Key common symptoms including post-exertional malaise, neurocognitive symptoms, and dysautonomia, as well as overlapping immunopathology, protein markers, and signalling pathways.
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While the publication of the Department of Health and Social Care’s interim delivery plan on ME/CFS is a welcome step in the right direction, it does not go far enough in advancing the needs of patients or in promoting the research agenda.
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Unfortunately, many services remain unfit for purpose, with NICE guidelines from 2021 still not implemented in many areas of the country.
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Equally vital is specific allocated research funding. The government and large funders such as Wellcome must increase funding and ensure that this money is spent on high quality biomedical research, both basic and applied. This should include large randomised controlled trials of therapeutics, similar to the Recovery trial for acute covid-19, and not wasted on ineffective or harmful behavioural interventions, as with the PACE trial.
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Sly Saint said:
“GPs are at their wit’s end with what’s happening to them because they have these patients that they’re desperately worried about that they can’t do anything with because nobody will see them. No one will accept their referrals.”
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Maybe the subtitle to that article could be "Fear and Loathing in Long Covid", with a nod to Hunter S. Thompson.
 
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