Today (Oct 10) is World Mental Health Day. For me, it is a day of reflection.
I had my first mental health crisis as a junior doctor, many years ago. I had hoped that, in the years since I left the profession, improved working hours and conditions might have relieved some of the pressure of the job. Apparently not.
A 2022 General Medical Council survey showed that a startling 61% of junior doctors in Scotland reported moderate to high levels of burnout. And it isn’t just doctors who are struggling. Last year, work pressure and understaffing contributed to more than 10% of Scotland’s nurses leaving the NHS.
The pandemic was brutal for the health service. Add staff shortages, backlogs in treatment, blocked beds, ambulance queues and the other horror stories that fill the headlines, and it is small wonder that our NHS workforce is suffering record levels of stress, burnout and depression.
Instead of addressing the root of these problems, the Westminster government has promised that we will be able to see our GPs within two weeks, and that it will speed up handover times from ambulances to hospitals, implying that it is inefficient staff rather than decades of underfunding causing the issues.
One senior A&E nurse has told me that her department routinely runs with 11 nurses instead of the full quota of 25
The government’s vow to “stand up for patients” is laudable, but health sector workers up and down the country can’t fail to hear the subtext: that, with an NHS in crisis, they are to blame.
No one should be expected to work under this type of pressure
Working in the NHS is, by its very nature, stressful, but it isn’t clinical emergencies that are causing such high levels of poor mental health. It is the fear of compromising patient care where workloads are too high and staff too thin on the ground.
I know what it is like when this type of work-related stress tips into full-blown depression and, speaking to NHS staff today, the anger and despair I hear are horribly familiar. The dread of going to work, constant worry that you have let down your patients, the absolute erosion of confidence and pleasure in your job.
One senior A&E nurse has told me that her department routinely runs with 11 nurses instead of the full quota of 25. No one should be expected to work under this type of pressure.
These are not people who are lazy or shirking their responsibility. These are people who are in a vocational profession to help others. These are people whose mental health is suffering because their working conditions are untenable.
Training and recruiting more doctors and nurses, and improving the workplace environment to give them the time and space to do the job they were trained for, would be costly, but it would be money well spent. Protecting the mental health of NHS workers would benefit all of us.
Helen Murray Taylor is an author and former doctor
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