On 24th April 2019, the British Medical Association published the results of a survey on physician health as well as a narrative study with Swansea University Medical School around trainee doctors' mental health - see link here.  

In addition, the Practitioner Health Service announced the opening of its new 24 hour mental health crisis text service for doctors in England - see link here.

Firstly, there was an interview with Gurdas Singh, co-chair of the BMA medical students' committee, who rightly said 'we need to care for the carers'.

Presenter, Rachel Burden, then interviewed Dr. Clare Gerada, the medical director of the Practitioner Health Programme.   Clare described the one in four statistic (of docs responding to the survey who had been affected by mental ill health in the last year) as worrying and added that the figures would be much the same for nurses.  She went on to talk about how personality traits selected for in medicine - such as perfectionism and martyrdom - can lead to burnout for medics.  Clare also described major problems associated with the current environment in which doctors are practising, including a lack of time to reflect on the emotional aspect of the job.  

Clare recommended that we need a senior level body to oversee NHS staff wellbeing.  She explained about the new 24 hour mental health crisis text service for doctors in England which has just been started by the Practitioner Health Programme but that what we really need is an NHS confidential face to face service for doctors.  Such a service will be in place by the end of 2019 for doctors in England.

Clare described how we should be supporting staff to help them to give the emotional support which is routinely required of healthcare professionals.  Nicky then asked 'How worried should we be about the impact on patients?' and Clare responded that patients shouldn't worry that their GP will burst into tears in front of them.  She said that it's not patients who should be worried about staff mental health but doctors and that we should all, as patients, be worried about the mental health of the NHS workforce.  Clare also pointed out that the other UK nations will have their own issues and that the current situation was only planning for extending the service to doctors in England.

Dr. Rebecca Lawrence, consultant psychiatrist and DSN committee member, was then interviewed.  She described her own experience of mental ill health.  Rebecca talked about how the work situation for trainee doctors is different today compared to when she was training with the potential stressors including shift work, more technology to negotiate, increased pressure to avoid complaints and the absence of the old team structures.  Rebecca said that she was pleased to hear about the new text crisis support system as well as the roll out of the face to face support but that issues regarding the system in which doctors are working also needed to be addressed in order to reduce the likelihood of burnout and serious mental illness.  She talked about training can be very hard in the early stages and people who struggle can be thought to be 'not up to medicine' as well as how medics are afraid that they may be reported to the GMC which she described as the 'ultimate horror for doctors'.  (Rebecca blogs about her experiences as doctor and patient here and also tweets as @Rebecca99LT .)

 Ella, a third year medical student then described her experience of mental ill health while at medical school and how she had received fantastic support but that she was aware that this was not the case for everyone.  Ella talked about how mental ill health for medics can be viewed as a 'fatalistic failing' or the individual's own fault.  She said that doctors are human and are allowed to be ill but that we don't like to acknowledge this.  Ella concluded by saying that she was still keen to work in the NHS.

During the on-air discussion, a listening nurse tweeted about how disappointing it was that the focus on mental health support was again about doctors.  Rebecca agreed that all health professionals needed appropriate support and how a very large service would be needed to cover everyone.

Finally, Dr. Louise Freeman, co-chair of DSN, explained about the work of DSN in facilitating informal peer support for UK based doctors and medical students as well as campaigning to improve care and there was a brief discussion about the needs of doctors with addiction including mention of the Sick Doctors' Trust and the British Doctors and Dentists Group.

The programme will be available to listen again online until 23rd May 2019.  (Clare Gerada's interview is at 7 minutes into  the programme with Rebecca and Ella's slot at 1 hour and 5 minutes.)  Link here.

Specialist sources of support for UK medics are listed here on the DSN website.

DSN  is FREE to join and has an online, anonymous support forum for UK doctor and medical student members only.  

Find out more here.