Songbirds and Sirens - Sounds of Recovery from a Pandemic

In this final episode, Mark and I talk about the significant effects that lockdown has had on both the practical organisation and financial impact on an international small non-profit organisation such as Steps-2-Walk.

He shares his insight on the differences around the world for orthopaedic surgeons and the services that they provide to the populations they serve.

The prolonged lockdown has created significant challenges for surgeons, particularly those in training, and how they maintain and develop their skills.

If you would like to donate to the Steps2Walk Charity please go to https://steps2walk.org/

In this episode, Mark and I discuss what comes next for Foot and Ankle Surgery, and Orthopaedics in general.

He shares his views on how innovation should drive change rather than the latest available technology.

Mark is inspired by the younger generation of Orthopaedics Surgeons who embrace values that include a focus on the importance of lifestyle.

He also explains the importance of correction of  crippling foot and ankle deformities for patients, particularly children, and the impact that these deformities have, not just on their lives, but the lives of the wider community.

To find out more about Steps2Walk go to  https://steps2walk.org/

Dr Mark Myerson has spent a lifetime helping people to walk.  In a career that spans decades, he has developed teaching programmes to train surgeons across the globe to learn and develop surgical techniques to correct foot deformities.

Mark launched the Charity Steps2Walk to facilitate the opportunity for experienced Foot and Ankle Surgeons to help train other orthopaedics surgeons around the world, particularly in areas where access to specialist foot and ankle surgery is extremely limited.

I caught up with Mark a few months after the Pandemic had hit the world and we were just coming out of the first lock-down, to find out the impact that this was having on this extraordinary surgical programme.

To find out more about Steps2Walk, visit https://steps2walk.org/

In this final episode with our Alberto Gregori, we look to the future and towards next for him and World Orthopedic Concern.

In this episode, Alberto Gregori, and I explore how the use of drones and AI technology could impact positively and shaping health care in underdeveloped countries.

Alberto Gregori was an early adopter of computer navigation and total knee replacement. 

In this episode, we explore the challenges that the NHS faces in restarting elective services.

We chat about how the healthcare sector needs to evolve to cope with the backlog and the role that the private sector has in that recovery.

10 years ago Alberto Gregori invited me to join NHS Lanarkshire. What prompted me to see yes, was a shared appreciation of the fact that by surrounding yourself with great people who have a can-do attitude, the impossible becomes possible. 

Alberto and his wife Tricia Connor were instrumental in transforming the A & E and orthopaedic departments in Hairmyres, a hospital famed for treating George Orwell for tuberculosis, as he penned part of 1984. Alberto was instrumental in introducing physician assistants to the UK. And he has been a trainer and educator of numerous PAs, doctors and orthopaedic surgeons. 

He and Trish left Hairmyres to pursue an even greater goal of healthcare in Africa, as chairman-elect a World Orthopedic concern, and also Flyspeck, or charities that are taking orthopaedic healthcare to parts of Africa,  Alberto discusses the impact COVID-19 and the lockdown has had on providing health care to some of the world's most needy.

Donna McCloskey chats about what it means to her to be an ethical investor and the challenges that a fluctuating economy is going to have for the housing market.

Donna explains how her love of helping people enables her to bring together people with a social conscience to build an additional income stream, whilst providing fantastic quality homes and stability to people who want to build a better future for their family and themselves.

A back injury ended Donna McCloskey's life as a 'Peggy Mitchell' landlady.  Donna shares her experience of being a patient and how this helped shape her mindset for moving forward as a new type of landlord in property.

Donna McCloskey is an ethical property investor, developer.  
Her real passion is helping people; whether that is a landlord providing fantastic homes to her tenants, or as a business coach, helping other property investors project plan their dreams of alternative income streams.

Liz Ashley talks about the challenges ahead for Medicine and the impact that COVID and treating patients with COVID has had on their mental health.
Liz describes how her experience with COVID and lockdown has changed her perspective on life.

Liz Ashley and I discuss the part of Medicine that is so often overlooked.  Dying and death. 
It is the fear of dying that has caused so much of the panic around the response to COVID.  Liz talks frankly about how she got her own fear in check.

Liz talks candidly about the effect that stopping Healthcare is having in the UK.  Not only is the there the detriment to patients not getting treated, but also a significant impact on the training of doctors.
Liz reflects on the benefits of technology as an aide to Anaesthetist, but that they are not at risk of being replaced by robots anytime soon.
With that in mind, society, politicians, employers and most importantly doctors themselves, need to recognise our true worth.  A clap is not enough. 

In this episode, Liz and I discuss how Medicine has changed over the last decade.  We lament a world where working in medicine was not only hugely rewarding but also fun.
Liz also gives her insightful perspective on the benefits for all in the UK, that having a thriving Private Sector provides and that instead of the UK remaining on of the global leaders in Health, the delayed recovery may, in fact, be a race to the bottom.

Liz Ashley is a Consultant Cardiothoracic Anaesthetist in London.  She discusses her first-hand experience of COVID as the pandemic hit London.  
She describes how the reaction of fear for the NHS, effectively closed a significant part of the healthcare sector and how it feels that the 'powers that be' may have utlised the pandemic as a paralysing agent for the Private Sector.

What next?  How does this pause for medicine shape the future?
In this final part of the interview with Chris Pearce, we look to the future and the opportunities for medical education and humanitarian work.

Chris Pearce talks in-depth about the recovery plan for Orthopaedic Surgery in Singapore. At the peak of the pandemic, the focus correctly was on cancer and urgent trauma surgery.  
At the very start, priority detailed plans were created for resuming elective surgery.  As the number of deaths from COVID-19 starts to disappear, Chris explains how elective surgery in Singapore is soon to be back to full elective operating capacity.

The effects of lockdown on healthcare has resulted in technology being adopted in ways that many have been hoping for.  
As Medics adapt to new ways of working and managing patients Chris Pearce talks openly about the benefits of technology in Medicine.
But there are concerns and he advises caution to ensure that any changes are adopted to facilitate and compliment the doctor's management of patients and not as a replacement.

Singapore was one of the first countries outside China to go into lockdown.  Find out how their previous experience with SARS helped them in the early stages of the pandemic.

Chris Pearce is an Orthopaedic Surgeon based in Singapore.  In this first episode, we chat about how Singapore managed the pandemic in the early stages.

What does recovery from the pandemic sound like? Fear was the instrument that implemented the 'lockdown' but is also the agent paralysing the recovery.

A new and potentially more damaging pandemic has arrived that of the patients who have not been able to get help from doctors desperate to treat them.

Crewed missions to Mars are underway for the next decade.  Yet at this time of unprecedented scientific advances, healthcare is not yet able to reassure patients that they can have a hip replacement performed without fear of COVID-19.

With no vaccine imminent, society needs to find a way to cohabit with the virus, while simultaneously living our lives.