Burnout and the burden of life-and-death decisions during the pandemic have driven exhausted front-line staff to the edge. Some shared their experiences with us: on.ft.com/39cGmLO
Doctors who are struggling with their mental health often find themselves in a vicious bind: in a culture of stoicism that stigmatises weakness, they can be reluctant to seek help, particularly when it requires them to consult with colleagues on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
The bleak reality illustrates a deeper crisis that long predates the pandemic: an undercurrent of burnout and mental illness plaguing a profession that should be uniquely placed to look after itself on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
In 1973, the American Medical Association published a landmark paper acknowledging that doctors, popularly viewed as invulnerable, were struggling with mental illness at far higher rates than the general public. Yet, support is still lacking today on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
As waves of patients flooded the wards at the start of the pandemic, several people quit their residency programmes, some were suicidal, and a cohort of newly qualified doctors were frequently working 80-hour weeks on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
A paper in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology found that, during the first wave of the pandemic, 22% of all UK medical staff met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, 47% for anxiety and the same number for depression on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
In addition to witnessing extraordinarily high volumes of death and suffering over the past year, many medical workers have been forced to make unprecedented ethical decisions that they would never have been faced with in normal practice on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image
While there are signs of progress — China, the US and UK made programmes and funding available during the pandemic to support staff — some critics argue that such provisions are often too little, too late on.ft.com/39cGmLO Image

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More from @FinancialTimes

26 Mar
In case you missed them, here are some of this week’s most-read stories: Junior lawyers and consultants are warning they are suffering burnout after working longer hours in isolation during the pandemic
on.ft.com/31k6lMG
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The chief executive of AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, is dealing with an unprecedented level of criticism
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24 Feb
Persuading African-Americans to be vaccinated against Covid-19 is proving particularly difficult for doctors. Their fear comes after centuries of medical malpractice created mistrust in the US government ft.com/content/515d39…
To understand why so many black Americans are sceptical of the Covid-19 vaccine, go back 90 years to Tuskegee, Alabama, where officials recruited volunteers from local farms for an unethical medical trial ft.com/content/515d39…
Men like Lillie Tyson Head’s father were part of an experiment about syphilis, which involved denying them treatment, even after a safe and effective cure had been found. At least 28 died. ft.com/content/515d39…
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3 Feb
🚨Positive news alert: The number of Covid-19 vaccinations globally has surpassed the total number of confirmed cases.

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While vaccination rates are accelerating quickly, the rise in cases of Covid-19 are slowing, though that is due to measures other than vaccines, such as lockdowns and social distancing policies ft.com/content/e29efb…
Israel is the only country where vaccines are already reducing transmission because inoculation has been rolled out more extensively and rapidly than anywhere else in the world ft.com/content/e29efb…
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3 Feb
With climate change imposing ever-higher costs, governments, businesses and investors are belatedly trying to work out how to impose a proportionate monetary cost on those responsible. Pricing carbon emissions will be essential on.ft.com/3aKxiOf
The expected level of carbon prices is going up. Energy giant BP is planning for a carbon price of $100 a tonne of CO2 by 2030 — and experts say that’s not fanciful thinking on.ft.com/3aKxiOf
A carbon price of $100 per tonne would supercharge investment in low-carbon technologies but it would also cripple businesses that are not able to adapt on.ft.com/3aKxiOf
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Free to read: A year ago the UK had plenty of scientific expertise in vaccines but very little industrial capacity to make them. Since then, the coronavirus pandemic has changed the industry on.ft.com/3tg68XE
The UK has become a global leader in buying and distributing vaccines, which provide the best exit strategy from a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people in the country on.ft.com/3tg68XE Image
The UK has so far secured access to 367m doses from seven suppliers. The National Audit Office expects the government to invest £11.7bn to develop, purchase, manufacture and deploy Covid-19 vaccines on.ft.com/3tg68XE Image
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26 Jan
Free-to-read: Back in November, @timhayward was diagnosed with Covid-19 and in a matter of hours after arriving at the hospital, he was put on a ventilator. What follows is his account of 30 days in hospital, 10 of those unconscious in the ICU ft.com/content/2b0dbb…
At the time, the UK government identified three symptoms of Covid-19: a persistent cough, loss of smell or taste, or a raised temperature.

'I had none of these, just the sort of chesty flu that hits me every autumn' ft.com/content/2b0dbb…
Very quickly, Tim started feeling unusually short of breath and decided to call for an ambulance.

‘I felt “out of it” and had an overpowering feeling that life would be a lot better if I could just take one decent full breath’ ft.com/content/2b0dbb…
Read 9 tweets

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