As we start to move to the next stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like a moment to take stock. The country has gone through huge changes to our way of life over the last few months, and those changes have been mirrored in our hospitals. We may be starting to see a light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, but what will that mean for healthcare staff caring for patients?

I’ve taken this brief pause in a busy time to reflect on what the recent months have meant for us.

As an anaesthetist, this spring, my and my colleagues’ working lives have been transformed. Our normal routine of planned surgery halted, we quadrupled our ability to look after critically ill patients, and many of us (myself included) went back into intensive care to look after the really, really sick patients admitted with COVID-19.

We repurposed equipment like anaesthesia machines for ventilating ICU patients, and our operating department colleagues came up with many ingenious workarounds that made it easier to care for our patients in challenging circumstances.

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