The BMA has urged that healthcare leaders must recognise the importance of junior doctors’ wellbeing in delivering better care and guaranteeing the future of an efficient NHS.
To mark World Mental Health Day, the BMA has released its ‘Supporting Health and Wellbeing at Work’ report, which calls for better universal access to occupational health services and improved mental health support for doctors in training, as well as those across the profession.
With junior doctors citing health and wellbeing as a core reason for taking time away from training programmes, the failure to address this issue will ultimately exacerbate existing workforce pressures, potentially compromising patient care and incurring increased cost for the health service, it warns.
Dr Jeeves Wijesuriya, BMA junior doctors committee chair, said: “Last week’s announcement of extra funding to roll out the NHS Practitioner Health Programme for all doctors is incredibly welcome.”
Professor Dinesh Bhugra CBE, BMA president and Emeritus Professor of Mental Health & Cultural Diversity at Kings College, London, who is launching the survey on medical students’ and doctors’ mental health and wellbeing, said: “The mental health of the medical profession is one of the most important issues facing the NHS today...We must create an open culture, whereby leaders recognise wellbeing as a vital issue and empower all levels of their organisations to make it a priority.”
