"Why we shouldn't be calling our healthcare workers 'heroes'" - (...) The danger of using the language of heroism is that it mutes critique and debate: heroes aren’t supposed to complain, or speak out about inadequate protective equipment or lack of testing capacity, or to point out what damage years of austerity have done to healthcare provision in the UK. We shouldn’t expect heroism from healthcare workers, we should expect professionalism in a context of an adequately resourced, well-run service. As the Edinburgh GP says: 'People do the job because of a sense of vocation and professionalism – not out of some heroic sense of sacrifice – and they want to be kept as safe as they possibly can'. A GP based in Yorkshire goes out of her front door at 8pm on a Thursday – but only, she told me, out of politeness. She hates being called a 'hero'. Her hard work on the job – what others regard as her heroism – is precisely what renders her unheroic to herself. 'If I was a hero', she says, 'I would stand up and call out the government, but I am not, and I go to work and bumble on. A bit like the soldiers led by buffoons who were told to go over the top to be greeted by gunfire – except I am highly trained and should know better'”