An NHS frontline worker has been ‘betrayed’ after being suspended from a hospital for a Facebook message urging COVID deniers to follow lock-in rules.
Gary Oldershaw, 53, an intensive care unit practitioner, spoke out on January 4 after seeing seven patients die during a 12-hour shift at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.
He wrote a long post in response to seeing a friend share conspiracy theories about coronavirus.
Oldershaw urged people to listen to medical and governmental advice and ‘stay home and look after yourselves’.
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However, an anonymous complaint was lodged with the hospital about the content of the post, which contained explicit language.
The NHS worker said he was notified by the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust on February 7 that he had been suspended for bringing the trust into disrepute.
Oldershaw, who has come from semi-retirement to help treat coronavirus patients, said he would never return to the hospital, where he worked for 17 years.
He said on the Facebook entry that he does not mention where he works, but admits that he does not have to use such a “colorful language”.
In the message he wrote: “This is a real ***. I saw well, young people are dying in my arms. Stop being a *** and do what you asked to do.
“Listen for what medics and the government are telling us.”
Regarding his suspension, he said: ‘When I first suspended, I doubted my own ability. I thought I might be endangering a patient or someone dying on my watch.
‘It made me worry for days that I accidentally killed someone. When I found out it was Facebook, it was just so ridiculous.
“People are dying every day and we have been at the forefront of saving as many lives as possible.
“For the first time in my career, I was in tears because we had to watch seven people die in one day, and five people die the next.”
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Oldershaw said he felt “completely betrayed” and added: “I put my heart and soul into this work and they hurt me. I will never come back.”
He worked in the hospital as an operations department (ODP) for 17 years before retiring last summer.
In December, he returned to the front line to help the intensive care unit just before the second wave of COVID, working on the hospital’s intensive care unit for the first time.
Around the same time, hospitals in Essex declared a “major incident” after being flooded with COVID-19 patients.
Oldershaw said he did not learn he was suspended before starting a weekend shift at 8am, and was told by a manager that he had to go home while already in his full personal service and ready to work.
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After Oldershaw called, he learned that he had been suspended after an anonymous person lodged a complaint.
He said: “I was completely holed up. I was completely empty. I could not understand why I was suspended.”
He alleges that because he sent the email with the notice of the complaint to a wrong address, he was never consulted or talked to before the decision was made.
“This is not what the NHS needs, we are in a pandemic, the hospitals are overwhelmed. We need so many people to help,” he said.
“They don’t have to take it that far. I think they could have talked to me and had a chat, but I was just suspended.”
A spokesman for the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘As this is an ongoing investigation, the Trust can not comment. ‘
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