A ‘virtual status’ in healthcare: Immigrant ‘key worker’ against the coronavirus crisis
A ‘key worker’ is defined by NHS Business as ‘a care professional who takes a key role in coordinating the care of the patient and promoting continuity, ensuring the patient knows who to access for information and advice’. National Health Service (NHS)...
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‘It’s a kind of magic’
COVID attire, mimesis and the limits of rationalism[1] Over the past few weeks, airport travel has had the feel of a global game of musical chairs, with everyone scrambling to find their seat (i.e., return home) before the music stops...
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Uncertainty and anxiety: the ‘responsible public’ in lockdown
If you want to see the impact of the lockdown, the first thing you will want to do is look outside your window. Listen to the eerie silence in the streets- no moving traffic or people. If you can take...
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What’s missing from the UK COVID response? Clear communication
If we were playing a game of Just A Minute with the political response to the COVID pandemic, the UK government would have been stopped multiple times for hesitation, repetition and deviation. The phrase ‘this is a war’ would be...
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The first of April and who was laughing?
April fool anyone? Or perhaps an April fish? Not in the mood? No, me neither. Although my younger daughter cling-filmed the toilet bowl and salted her mother’s morning cup of tea. My age-dulled palate barely registered the salt, and an...
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Internally displaced peoples and COVID-19
Africa’s largest city, Lagos, home for more than 20 million people is as a quiet as never before. As with many other cities in the world, Nigeria’s economic capital, on the 31th of March entered a two-week lockdown to prevent...
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COVID: A rural perspective
How do we live today in the age of COVID? One answer is that, of course, there is no “we,” other than for our leaders who proclaim that “we will beat it together” and who misguidedly believe that “we can...
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In lockdown with depression
let’s not pass the buck onto families in the aftermath of COVID-19 Commentators are beginning to suggest that in the aftermath of COVID-19, we face a pandemic of mental illness. Countering this call to arms for psychiatry, others have emphasised...
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We need rest, not reflection: psychological support for the medical frontline
The covid-19 pandemic is likely to put healthcare professionals across the world in an unprecedented situation, having to make impossible decisions and work under extreme pressures. These decisions may include how to allocate scant resources to equally needy patients, how...
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Reasonable adjustments: work in the time of corona
Our universities have shut, and we do not know for how long. Many of us are adjusting to working remotely. The global pandemic of coronavirus is changing the way we interact socially, and changing the way we work. While employers...
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Diary of a cough: meaning matters
I’ve had a cough for all of the year 2020. It started on January 1st, after sharing Christmas meals and their preparation with an explosively sneezing brother. In my family, we like to blame our infections on a particular person,...
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