Thread by @JujuliaGrace

I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing this thread about my personal circumstances. I am being trolled, because I am being misrepresented+insulted. This information below is already in the public domain.

I am a doctor. I qualified in 2010. My husband is also a doctor; an ICU…

…consultant. I set up EveryDoctor because I wanted to improve things for NHS staff and patients. We were living in London (in 2018); we had a 1 and 2 year old. I couldn’t afford to give up my job and pay for childcare while setting up EveryDoctor. We renovated a small cottage…

…in Ireland, where childcare is much cheaper. I stopped working clinically for a year and lived in the middle of nowhere, taking no earnings, to set up EveryDoctor. My husband worked away a lot. It was very hard. EveryDoctor started to gain members…

…I had been threatened that if I worked in the NHS I’d be reported to the GMC as a ‘troublemaker’. I took on some part-time work as a child and adolescent psychiatrist registrar to avoid losing my clinical skills. Then the pandemic struck.

We decided to return to London…

…to enable my husband to help run one of the largest London teaching hospital ICUs. I gave up my clinical work to focus on our doctor members, many of whom had no PPE. EveryDoctor, the team of doctors (all of whom were working clinically other than myself) started doing media…

…work. We began MP briefings. We campaigned for safe protections for healthcare workers.

I have continued to work full-time for EveryDoctor. There is a lot of work to do; workplace conditions for NHS staff are awful, patients are being let down because the government is…

…taking steps to underfund, dismantle and privatise the NHS (much of this is happening covertly). Healthcare should not be political and yet has become incredibly politicised.

We are held (appropriately) to high degrees of scrutiny. We are an independent non-profit…

…we cannot operate as a charity because we speak up about political matters. We provide full financial information to every member every quarter, and are moving to an annual public financial report at the end of this tax year…

…the organisation is growing thanks to your support. We do high profile work every day, representing our members. Amidst near-constant attack, we seek counsel to establish which are legitimate questions and which are fuelled by a motive to dismantle our work. This is difficult…

…and requires a lot of input from others.

On a personal level, I decided to give up my GMC number partly because I am deeply committed to this work, and partly because I am vulnerable to GMC referrals (as one device to attack EveryDoctor’s work), and didn’t want something…

…of this nature to distract attention from the hard work of my team.

This was not an easy decision; I’m a doctor, and I loved caring for my patients.

I hope you’ll forgive me for talking about myself for a moment; in politics or campaigning, projects such as these often…

…rely on one or two people devoting all of their energy to starting something, so that others can build it far beyond their capabilities. That person becomes the vessel of attacks and animosity as well as positive attention from the supporters of a cause.

I deserve neither…

…targeted attacks or particular high praise. There are many others working for @EveryDoctorUK, doing media work for us, advising us on our work, engaging with us and helping to grow the organisation.

I might not be the right person…

…to lead EveryDoctor forever, but I’m leading it right now. Getting it to this place has been incredibly difficult, and I’ve tried my best.

I’m trying my best as a Mum and a wife too. I don’t want to focus unduly on myself; and so I’ll stop here…

…our team has important strategic work ahead of the Health and Care Bill returning next week, in the House of Lords. I’m going to focus on doing that and supporting our doctor members through a very difficult time. Ju