Top three takeaways from our COVID-19 ‘snap poll’

Over a four day period in early February, over 400 people on the College’s Membership Engagement Panel – in every region of the UK- completed our ‘snap poll’ and gave us a window into their experiences. We’ve since used those findings in a wide variety of our policy work, including at our annual flagship event and in briefings to the government. You can read more about the poll’s findings here.

Over the past several weeks I have spoken to a lot of people about these results – from anaesthetists, to civil servants, to parliamentarians and other NHS staff working on the COVID-19 frontline. When looking at these results in the round, people usually keep coming back to the same three points.

1. Workforce retention

Firstly, they are concerned about what these findings are telling us about the retention of the anaesthetic workforce in the long term. The College’s latest Workforce Census (2020) shows that prior to the pandemic, retention was a significant challenge facing anaesthesia at all grades. Our findings indicate that the pandemic has worsened this trend, with 39 per cent of those surveyed looking to cut back their hours and 19 per cent now considering leaving the profession due to COVID-19 pressures. With a national anaesthetic workforce real-gap of 11.8 per cent - the NHS really cannot afford to lose any more experienced anaesthetists.

There is no one easy fix to improve retention, but there is a consensus view that the exhaustion and mental health challenges facing the NHS workforce need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Our poll findings show that 34 per cent of our members surveyed have poor mental health due to the pandemic, with many telling us that they are suffering with PTSD and feel completely burnt out. The evolving ‘Health and Wellbeing’ offers from the NHS across all four nations of the UK is a welcome support for many staff – but anaesthetists need to have confidence that ambitions to make up lost time on elective care will not come before their own wellbeing.

2. Anaesthetists as leaders

Secondly, these findings demonstrate the unique role the anaesthetist has played during the pandemic. NHS and health leaders, from the Health Secretary, to the Chief Medical Officer, and NHS England’s National Medical Director have all been fulsome in their praise and appreciation of anaesthetists as system leaders during this challenging time.

Our snap poll findings speak to this, with nearly half (47 per cent) of anaesthetists surveyed saying they have played a leadership role during the pandemic and 52 per cent having said they have learnt new, transferrable skills. The Policy Team at the College is going to be exploring these findings in more detail over the coming weeks and months – we want to better understand what our workforce has learnt about not only clinical practice, but how NHS systems are functioning now and should aspire to function in the future.

3. Collaborations during COVID-19

Finally, it is undeniable that COVID-19 has achieved in one year what several NHS re-organisations spanning the past 20 years have sought to: greater collaborative working. Nearly two-thirds of our members surveyed say that they have experienced more team-working during the pandemic. There is now a genuine spirit of optimism and hope that this sense of team-working and collaboration will continue as we leave COVID-19 behind.

However, it is important to note that many of our members emphasised in the free text survey comments that team-working was much greater during the first wave than the second, due to the more ‘horrendous pressure’ they were working under, and decreased as exhaustion set in. Lessons learnt from the pandemic must centre around how we cultivate the positives from the pandemic in terms of team-working without recreating the unsustainable conditions that fostered them.

I would like to thank all RCoA members who took the time from their very busy day to complete our poll. You provided us with the information we need to make the case for change and a strong steer about the issues that matter most to our members.

You can learn more about the COVID-19 work the Policy Team is doing, and find out how to get more involved, by visiting our webpage. You can also contact the team with your thoughts and experience at advocacy@rcoa.ac.uk.

Lisa Plotkin