NHS Workers

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 3 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:58, 3 November 2020

Well, Llywydd, can I thank Jayne Bryant for that very telling supplementary question? Can I pay tribute to the clinicians that she mentioned in that supplementary question, for the way in which they speak up on behalf of the front-line experience of so many of their colleagues? And can I just take this chance to condemn the abuse that I know a number of those clinicians have experienced as a result of the work that they have done in communicating directly to people in Wales about what it is like to be a front-line clinician in the NHS during the period of coronavirus? It is shocking and utterly unacceptable the way that some people have chosen to abuse those people who have simply explained to the rest of us what it is like to provide the services on which we all rely.

We go on, as I said, Llywydd, working in social partnership with all those who have an interest in our NHS. I think it was remarkable that earlier in the pandemic we were able to provide 950 individuals with additional clinical skills training so that they could be deployed to help one another and to reinforce people at the front line in dealing with urgent and emergency care services. And I'm very glad indeed that we took an early decision to provide £1 million in additional funding to Cardiff University so that they could make available the health for professionals service, which had previously been available only to doctors in the NHS, to make that available to the whole of the NHS workforce. The toll this pandemic is taking on our front-line staff is not just physical, and it's very real in its physical sense—Jayne Bryant referred to people working those long shifts in PPE equipment—but it is emotional as well. A draining sense of being at the front line has its impact on people's mental health and well-being, and that's why we extended that health for professionals service to all those who work in the NHS here in Wales.