Shaping the post-pandemic recovery plan

As we begin to see hospital admissions fall, our attention needs to focus on how we develop our people recovery plan. I am concerned about the impact of the pandemic, but am hopeful that we will be enabled to support the recovery of our teams alongside the significant activity recovery plan that will be needed to enable us to commence the treatments we have had to postpone.

International evidence and public health messaging cited by Williamson et al (2020) indicate that COVID-19 has placed a substantial demand on an overstretched NHS. Bailey and West (2021) have also reflected that we must remember that in January 2020 before the pandemic the NHS was already in the middle of a workforce crisis with the highest ever stress levels, and high staff vacancies and turnover. They say: ‘The system was cracking … and then the pandemic struck.’