Thank you for your food donations – but it’s not just NHS doctors and nurses who need your kindness

Help The Hungry: Healthcare workers are the most visible group in need of support during this crisis, but I worry that it is all too easy to ignore those who are suffering the most

There is no culinary creation that can rival a slice of buttered toast at 3am on a hospital night shift. The bread should be cheap and white, the butter should come in a little foil package, squeezed out to melt on the toast, and it should be served on a piece of paper towel, accompanied with a cup of strong tea and a pile of medical paperwork.

After six or seven hours on your feet, running around the too-quiet corridors of a busy NHS hospital, dealing with admissions and emergencies and everything in-between, such a meal is a little slice of heaven.

Snacks power the healthcare workforce. Over the last few weeks, up and down the country in wards and emergency departments and admission units, the gifts have been arriving. Krispy Kreme Donuts in Barnet, Easter eggs at the Nightingale, chocolate chip cookies in Oxford, and Domino’s pizza everywhere, have been sent in by an extraordinarily grateful and kind public, all to support the frontline professionals in the NHS who are working so hard.

And it is so gratefully received. There is little that can buoy you up more on an on-call shift than the gift of a slice of pizza, or a doughnut. The work during the coronavirus pandemic is especially hard. Hours wearing hot, stuffy personal protective equipment, caring for very sick patients, the constant vigilance to maintain good infection control. Such gifts are all the more appreciated in this epidemic, and everyone in healthcare is grateful for your kindness.

Healthcare workers are the most visible group in need of support during this crisis, but I worry that it is all too easy to ignore those who are suffering the most. In the hospital itself, the gifts are commonly sent to the intensive care unit, the doctors’ mess, and the emergency department – the areas the public are most aware of.

But most of the work treating people unwell with Covid-19 is on the general wards and in the medical admissions units. While the doctors and nurses are the face of the healthcare response, and are the recipients of many of these gifts, the amazing work of healthcare assistants, of porters, and of cleaners is all too easy to ignore.

These staff groups are working exceptionally hard, and exposed to many of the same risks, while working for much lower pay, often in insecure jobs outsourced to private contractors. Within the hospital, these groups are far more in need of a doughnut than me.

And then let’s look beyond the hospital. GPs have fundamentally altered the way they work in a matter of weeks, and are providing exceptional care keeping people out of hospital. Carers are more often than not low-paid, with little job security, and poor access to PPE, yet are risking their safety travelling from house to house caring for the most vulnerable in our society. They too could do with a slice of pizza after a gruelling day’s work – or some help with food at home if circumstances are leaving them short.

Now look at your own neighbourhood. While healthcare workers still have their jobs, their income, and their vocation, others in our communities find themselves furloughed or unemployed, all due to a virus outside our control.

Those on the financial edge before the epidemic now teeter and fall. Those in poor or overcrowded housing, without ready access to outside space, suffer most from the consequences of lockdown. I’d rather go without my box of chocolates if it meant that the most vulnerable in our communities could gain some extra support.

That is why campaigns like The Independent‘s Help The Hungry appeal is so important – it raises awareness and allows meals and groceries to be provided where they are most needed.

So, next Thursday night, as you stand by your doorstep, or lean out your window, to clap for us in the NHS, please look around at your neighbours.

Think of the foodbanks, the kids on free school meals, the newly unemployed. And if you are able to make a donation of some kind, a gift, or a treat or cash, that’s great. Such generosity will always be appreciated by doctors, but maybe we aren’t the most in need right now.

Dr Michael FitzPatrick is co-chair of the trainees committee at the Royal College of Physicians