Imagine you were due to finish your employment this today (schedule 5:30pm but will most likely work til 8pm) and start your new job on Monday in another part of the country at 7am but you still don't have a work rota for your new job (so your 24 hour shift may not start til 7pm

You are exhausted from working through the Covid-19 pandemic. You've worked many more hours than you were contracted or that you will be paid for.
Your weekend will likely be spent moving house (if you are lucky enough to have found accommodation).

Your new employer might suggest that you spend your 2 'free days' watching induction videos or doing some online training so that you will be fully able to start first thing on Monday. Or perhaps Mon evening cos they haven't clarified the rota yet.

Imagine that you haven't seen your family for six weeks and most likely won't for another six weeks. If you are lucky. Imagine that you have a young family to look after and have to arrange child care for the long hours you'll be aware from home in this new job.

Imagine that you are paying a mortgage and paying rent for your new temporary location. Imagine that your professional body has just asked you for your annual subscription and your professional license fee is also due.

Imagine that for the next six months, you are going to work twice your contracted hours (breaching EWTD and all that is healthy and safe) and, if you work in a certain Mid-Western establishment might not get paid for 2 months. And not at all for the overtime.

You might just begin to imagine what it is like to be a 'junior' doctor.

(P.S. can we agree to call them 'Doctors and Consultants' rather than 'NCHDs and Consultants')

Fortunately you love what you do. You get great satisfaction caring for others. You and your colleagues are in this together.

And everyone else is clapping you. (And you don't buy the Irish Times so you don't have to read those frequent anti-Doctor swipes.)

If Covid has given us permission to do things differently and better, maybe we could turn our attention to our doctors 'in training' and care for them a bit better.