'What I learnt, as a A&E consultant, from time working in a Lebanon war zone'

Amjid, who works at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, recently spent time working in a hospital in Lebanon. One of the most emotive experiences was helping a 13-year-old girl who had come into the hospital having been shot in the femoral artery in her leg.

"She was close to losing her life,” Amjid recalls. “We didn’t have ready access to blood, and we didn’t have many units of blood available to be able to help her in the way we would in the NHS – that was a real moment for me.

"But using the limited resource we had, we did everything we could for her, and thankfully two days later, we managed to literally get her back on her feet. In those situations, all you think about is understanding what has happened to that person and getting to the solution as quickly and as safely as we can.

"It’s care in the simplest terms and goes back to the core of why many of us trained to be doctors. It was humbling and fulfilling getting to follow the patient journey through, something that you don’t often get to see when you work in emergency medicine.”

"I am left in awe at the overwhelming strength and resilience of the people in Lebanon, particularly the younger generation,” he adds. “It is truly an amazing place, with amazing people, whose experiences we can all learn from.”

Amjid has previously supported medical responses in natural disaster zones, including helping in the aftermath of earthquakes in Indonesia, Pakistan, Haiti, and China. But he says he has returned from providing urgent care in Lebanon with a “renewed perspective of what is important and how we view emergency medicine in our NHS”.

“When you come back from a warzone there is no doubt that your perspective shifts. It really does highlight what an amazing service we have in the NHS and the fantastic resource that we have at hand. We have amazing people, capacity and capabilities.

“But it also highlights for me some frustrations. My experience in Lebanon has shown how much you can do for your patients, with so very little. It is that focus on the outcome for the patient which is essential.

"You see past the blockers, and just get it done, working within the limited resources you have, to do whatever you can, to help the person in front of you in that moment, regardless of their background or circumstances. Perhaps there are lessons there for all of us.”