A doctor at Dumfries Infirmary believes working in developing nations stood her in good stead for the fight against the coronavirus in Dumfries and Galloway.
Freda Newlands has worked in a variety of countries, including Bangladesh, Myanmar, Gaza and North Jordan, over the past decade.
A new report from medical aid charity UK-Med, whom Freda worked with in Bangladesh, has revealed that doctors and nurses who have supported international emergency medical responses bring vital skills and experiences back home.
And Freda – an emergency medicine doctor at DGRI – said: “It builds your resilience, your capability, and ability to feel calm. I think it’s very good to have worked in low resource hospitals so that you’re able to appreciate what you’ve got and what’s available at home.
“Having seen the atrocities that I’ve seen overseas, nothing much fazes me in the UK anymore. People remark that I’m always very calm in a crisis, probably because of the things that I’ve seen and experienced.
“I do try and reassure patients here that we have great facilities available, that we are well-resourced in the UK, and that there will be something that we can help them with.
“When you return home, on reflection you think, ‘Well, actually we’re so lucky’.”
During her time in Bangladesh in 2018, Freda, who lives in Kippford, supported doctors and nurses to treat diphtheria patients in the Rohingya refugee camps Cox’s Bazar.
She has also worked for the charity in Myanmar in 2019, while in 2015 she spent six months on the North Jordan border with Medicine Sans Frontier treating war wounded patients.
And in 2019 she was in Gaza with Médecins du Monde training healthcare workers to prepare for mass-casualty events.
Freda, who was brought up in Dunscore and is a former Wallace Hall Academy pupil, has also used her experiences abroad to develop medical emergency simulation training sessions for GPs during the pandemic.
She said: “I do a lot of teaching with students and junior doctors. A lot of my role is in simulation where I can talk to them about: ‘Well, what if you didn’t have that available? What if you didn’t have that drug? What would you do? How can you think about other ways of providing that care if you didn’t have it to your fingertips?’
“You have to take some time out and recognise that you have to get away from it - which was more challenging when you’re overseas as you can’t necessarily do that. In Jordan in Gaza, due to security we were not able to even walk outside our house and hospital.
“In the emergency department, I think we’re very bad at taking breaks especially when there’s a queue of patients out the door. You do have to have some kind of escape valve.”
UK-Med’s report, called Global health responders – a shot in the arm for the NHS, shows that more than 80 per cent of medics felt there had been improvements in their clinical skills, resilience, well-being and the ability to provide better patient experiences following their experiences abroad.
And nearly 90 per cent said they had used the skills gained through their UK-Med work in their Covid-19 response.
That has prompted the charity to call on NHS leaders to encourage other medics to get involved in global health emergency responses to develop their skills.
“Experience gained in disasters and outbreaks by NHS staff fortifies our defences and increases our resilience. A global Britain needs global experience.”
