We’ve signed an open letter to Dr Michael McBride, Chief Medical Officer for Northern Ireland, and Professor Sir Chris Whitty KCB FRS, Chief Medical Officer for England.

It urges them to work with NHS Practitioner Health and the Northern Ireland Executive to commission an extension of the service to doctors and dentists in Northern Ireland.

The open letter has been coordinated by the charity Doctors in Distress and signed by a coalition of leading UK medical organisations, including DAUK.

NHS Practitioner Health

It points out that doctors working in England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey can all access confidential, expert mental health and addiction care designed for the profession.

Northern Ireland’s 5,200 whole-time-equivalent doctors and dentists are alone in the United Kingdom in having no equivalent dedicated provision.

The signatories draw on published evidence to set out the scale of unmet need:

• A 2024 British Medical Association member survey found that 44% of doctors reported suffering from depression, anxiety, stress, burnout or other mental health conditions related to or made worse by their work.
• Northern Ireland records the highest prevalence of common mental health conditions of any UK region, affecting at least one in five adults.
• HSC trusts recorded a sickness absence rate of 7.1% in 2024 – the highest of any UK
• health system – alongside a 5.6% medical and dental vacancy rate and the longest waiting lists in the United Kingdom.
• Applying NISRA benchmarks to the Northern Ireland medical and dental workforce produces a conservative estimate that mental-health-related absence accounts for between 25,000 and 31,000 lost working days each year, the equivalent of removing between 110 and 140 full-time doctors and dentists from the system annually.

Mental health support

Dr Matt Kneale, DAUK co-chair, said: “Doctors in Northern Ireland should not be left behind when it comes to accessing confidential mental health support.

“The pressures facing the workforce are immense, and dedicated services like NHS Practitioner Health make a real difference.

“Extending this support to Northern Ireland is essential for the wellbeing of clinicians and the safety and sustainability of patient care.”

Mary Jane Roberts, chief executive of Doctors in Distress, said: “It is an outrageous inequality that Northern Irish doctors are being treated like this.

Proven service

“It is so easily solved: NHS Practitioner Health is an expert, proven service, ready to provide the care that is needed. This is an ethical, speedy win. I am sure the CMOs as leaders of the medical profession will act to resolve the issue.”

Professor Baroness Gerada DBE FRCGP FRCPsych, patron of Doctors in Distress and founder of NHS Practitioner Health, said: “Now, more than ever, support for doctors is needed. There is so much distress and pain out there in the general public and our patients.

“We have to keep our healthcare professionals working, resilient, able to support the people that are really desperate.”

Read the letter in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

DAUK warned the proposals go against the Williams review and would ‘dismay doctors across the country’.

It said the timing of the announced reforms was ‘troubling’, coming as the GMC appeals the clearance of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah.

Dismay doctors

Dr Matt Kneale, DAUK co-chair, said: “Doctors across the country will be dismayed that the government has abandoned the cross-profession consensus established by the Williams review.

“We were promised the GMC would lose its power to appeal its own tribunal’s decisions.

“Instead, this consultation retains that power and creates new ones. At a time when the GMC is actively appealing the clearance of a doctor found to have committed no misconduct, the timing could not be more troubling.

“The framing of this announcement – as though the GMC has been too slow to punish doctors – ignores everything we know about how the GMC operates.

NHS Staff Survey results

“Its own data shows ethnic minority doctors are disproportionately referred.

“The recently-published NHS Staff Survey shows one in 10 doctors were physically attacked at work.

“The safety crisis in the NHS is not that doctors are getting away with misconduct.

“It is that doctors are being attacked, burned out and driven from the profession while a regulator with a proven track record of bias is handed yet more power.”

Human impact

DAUK also pointed to the human impact of the current regulatory process. The GMC’s own rolling three-year data shows that 36 doctors died while under investigation or being monitored between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2023. The GMC reported fewer than three suicides to protect individual identification.

Dr Shonnelly Novintan, DAUK’s Learn Not Blame lead, said: “The framing of the reforms focus on individual doctors rather than addressing systemic pressures, and this contributes to a worsening blame culture at a time when doctors under investigation already face high suicide rates.”

The reforms, the Government said, are a major modernisation of medical regulation, describing them as the most significant changes since 1983.

Rapid review

They follow a rapid review conducted by Lord John Mann into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the health service.

Alongside wider proposals, the Government is consulting on the first tranche of recommendations from Lord Mann’s review.

The GMC Order will consult on delivering these recommendations into law, introducing three key changes:

• The GMC will retain its existing right to appeal decisions made by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) to the courts.
• The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) will receive new powers to challenge interim decisions made by the MPTS, and the GMC will receive equivalent powers.
• Regulators will be required to share information with the PSA when requested.

Charlie Massey, GMC chief executive and registrar, said: “This is an important and long-awaited step towards a more responsive and compassionate approach to healthcare regulation.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Help for staff members experiencing Domestic Abuse

Domestic abuse impacts all aspects of an individuals life, including their work, and healthcare professionals in particular face unique barriers around seeking help. All NHS staff working in the UK should have support available to them at work. In 2023 NHS England joined the Employers Initiative on Domestic Abuse pledging to change workplace cultures around DA. Key recommendations are that NHS employers should have:

• a domestic abuse policy for staff as well as patients
• a trained designated point of contact for DA

Hestia’s Respond to Abuse Advice Line is a free resource for employers. Employers can call 020 3879 3695 Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, or email adviceline.eb@hestia.org for support, guidance or information about domestic abuse and how to support employees and colleagues experiencing domestic abuse.

The Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse website provides resources to support employers including an employers’ toolkit.

Support someone you know

If you are worried that a friend, neighbour or loved one is a victim of domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline for free and confidential advice, 24 hours a day on 0808 2000 247.


Domestic abuse advisers will offer confidential, non-judgemental information and advice on the options available to you helping you to keep safe and make informed choices.  #YouAreNotalone 

If you believe there is an immediate risk of harm to someone, or it is an emergency, you should always call 999.

If someone confides in you, there is more information on how to support a friend or colleague who is being abused.

Further guidance

• BMA report (2024) Domestic abuse in the health profession report
• Employers’ initiative on domestic abuse
• NHS Employers (2022) Supporting NHS staff with domestic violence and abuse (for organisations developing DA policy)
• A guide to meaningful survivor engagement – Women’s Aid
• White Ribbon training resources

Domestic abuse resources for clinical staff

• For Doctors
  • IRISi interventions provides specialist domestic violence and abuse training for General Practices and sexual health clinicians
  • Medical Women’s International Association Interactive Violence Manual
  • BMA Board of Science (2024) Domestic Abuse report
  • RCGP Safeguarding Toolkit
  • RCGP guidance on documenting DA in the electronic clinical record (2021)
• For Nurses
  • RCN Domestic abuse assessment tools and guidance (members only)
  • Guidance for nurses and midwives to support those affected by domestic abuse
  • Marac toolkit for health visitors, school nurses and community midwives
• General Resources and clinical guidance
  
  • Safe Lives resources for professionals
  • Red Whale pearl: Domestic abuse
  • elfh Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) learning
  • Cancer and domestic abuse: a toolkit for professionals
  • Standing together against domestic abuse
  • Guidelines for clinical management of non-fatal strangulation in acute and emergency care services

What is Just Culture?

Just Culture is about creating a culture of fairness, openness and learning. In a Just Culture, people can raise concerns over risks, errors, and near misses without fear of blame and punishment. DAUK has been calling for a culture of learning through our Learn Not Blame campaign, NHS England adopted the standard nearly a decade ago. However, anecdotal information suggests it is barely present when it should be universal. Now we need your help to see where the NHS is and to guide our future work in seeking improvements. This is more important than ever with increasing demand and staff shortages leading to poorer outcomes.

Just Culture survey

Please take a few minutes to complete our anonymous and confidential survey. Your feedback is vital. The survey is in association pilots’ union BALPA, which wants to understand the challenges in the aviation industry. Our survey on NHS Just Culture can be accessed here and will run until 20 December. Thank you for taking the time to complete it. If you have any questions, please contact the DAUK project lead here. And please support our work by becoming a member or donating to our Go Fund Me.

Each year, millions of people take part to focus on getting good mental health, and this year the theme is Movement: moving more for our mental health.

Everyone can get the mental health benefits of moving more, it’s all about finding what works for you.

Get involved by sharing your moments for movement for your mental health using the trends #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and #MomentsForMovement

Find out more with the Mental Health Foundation.

If you’re struggling with your mental health and wellbeing it can be daunting to ask for help. You might not know where to turn or who to contact.

It’s important to remember that you are not alone and that support is there for you.

We have brought together mental health and wellbeing resources to support our members and medical professionals.

Click here to access them now through our website.

This is a story of a clinician being punished for raising serious concerns about dangerous inaction on the greatest threat to global health we have ever, or will ever experience.

The right to peaceful protest is a basic human right. It cannot and must not be taken away, especially not when the reason for protest has an overwhelming evidence base and threatens the lives of everyone and everything we love.

To decide what is criminal and what is legal is a decision for courts and governments.

However, as clinicians we must stand shoulder to shoulder when the evidence is as clear as with the climate crisis.

The GMC’s Good Medical Practice states that doctors ‘take prompt action’ if they think patient safety ‘is or may be seriously compromised’ which is exactly what these climate protestors claim they are doing.

The GMC says it acts to protect the public against erring doctors and must sanction doctors to maintain public trust in the profession.

Swathes of the public, if not the majority, are deeply concerned about the future of our planet and the inaction of our leaders to avert catastrophe – they are not concerned about a doctor trying to save our planet.

DAUK will proudly stand alongside Dr Benn as this tribunal progresses.

Our methods may differ but the message is clear: Governments, including the UK Government, and organisations, including the GMC, are failing to act quickly and effectively enough to protect global patient safety.

Their response, despite countless warnings from scientists across the globe, is not enough, and we are now in a position of annual life-threatening extreme weather events.

Dr Sarah Benn, we believe, is on the right side of history, and we ask the GMC and the MPTS, can you say the same?

Given the evidence on climate change and its health impacts, we strongly believe that peaceful protest should not be viewed as condemnable professional misconduct – but as commendable public health advocacy.

Dr Taylor, GP spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), said that the Government’s own policies were responsible for much of the current levels of economic inactivity.

And he called on the Government to invest in public services to improve people’s health and boost the economy.

General practice

“We have 7.7 million people waiting for hospital treatment and mental health treatment,” Dr Taylor said.

“We have unprecedented demand in general practice to try to help people.

“What he’s actually saying is that while we are struggling to get people in to see doctors and therapists, and to get help and operations, and yet he wants to crack down on those very people.

“This is an appalling state of affairs, for a Prime Minister to pick on those people who are in the situation because of this government’s policies.”

Sick note culture

Dr Taylor was speaking after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to tackle what he called Britian’s ‘sick note culture’.

They included proposals to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work.

Instead ‘specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time and expertise to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they may need’, the Prime Minister said.

 “We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t,” Mr Sunak said.

“Building on the pilots we’ve already started we’re going to design a new system where people have easy and rapid access to specialised work and health support to help them back to work from the very first fit note conversation.  

“We’re also going to test shifting the responsibility for assessment from GPs and giving it to specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they need to do so.”  

Invest in health

Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Dr Taylor said: “If Government invested in health the economy would be £150bn better off, and we would have fewer off sick.

“If you don’t invest in health you get more long-term sick.

“This is not rocket science or even simple maths, yet we have a Prime Minister picking on those that his Government has left without support both physical and mental health.”

NHS England (NHSE) today announced that the Practitioner Health service for secondary care doctors, dentists and senior NHS staff would be extended by another 12 months.

DAUK reported how Practitioner Health had been due to have its funding cut from Monday – meaning no new referrals would be accepted leaving vulnerable doctors without access to its support – while a review into the service was carried out.

It led to a social media storm, with the decision criticised by doctors, healthcare professionals, and groups and associations.

Now NHSE has announced Practitioner Health will be extended by 12 months whole the wider review is carried out.

Ms Fernandes said: “We’re delighted that NHSE has reversed its decision to cut NHS Practitioner Health for hospital doctors.

Thank you DAUK members

“Thank you to our members and to everyone who made their voices heard.

“It is disappointing that NHSE felt able to cut this lifeline of a service without proper consultation and provision of an alternative.

“Everyone understands the need to ensure value for money within the NHS, but DAUK feels that the mental health of the doctors that provide healthcare for our patients is about as important as it gets.

“NHSE needs to reflect on its decision to stop Practitioner Health, reflect on the response that this generated, and consider an alternative way to treat and communicate with its workforce.”

What is NHS Practitioner Health?

NHS Practitioner Health is a free, confidential service for doctors and dentists across England with mental illness and addiction problems, who are working or looking to return to clinical practice. This service is a commitment as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.

Announcing the reverse, Dr Navina Evans, NHSE’s chief workforce officer, said: “Following discussions with Practitioner Health on their current service for secondary care doctors, dentists, and NHS senior staff, we have jointly agreed to extend the service by 12 months, for both existing and new service users, while we carry out a wider review to ensure that all NHS staff groups have the mental health support they need.”

NHS Practitioner Health has been given just days’ notice that its funding for secondary care will be paused from this Monday (15 April).

This is while a period of consultation is carried out on the service, which is currently treating more than 6,000 doctors and healthcare professionals, 60 per cent of whom are hospital staff.

It means that no new referrals will be accepted from Monday, leaving vulnerable doctors experiencing anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and addiction without access to support. Current clients will continue to be seen.

Ms Helen Fernandes, co-chair of DAUK, said: “This service is so important and given the pressure that our secondary care doctors and healthcare professionals are under, it’s needed more than ever.

“To turn off the funding just like that, with no warning and nothing in place is absolutely outrageous.

“These are real people who are in trouble and distress. They will need some support somewhere, so where do they go?

“The commissioners that fund the service want to do a piece of work to find out if it’s value for money, so rather than do that piece of work and keep the service running at the same time they’re going to stop it, which seems a really bizarre thing to do.”

NHS Practitioner Health

NHS Practitioner Health is a free, confidential service for doctors and dentists across England with mental illness and addiction problems, who are working or looking to return to clinical practice. This service is a commitment as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.

Dr Peter Bailey, who qualified as a GP in 1984 and has worked for NHS Practitioner Health for five years, said: “I feel incredibly passionate about the decision that’s been made – it’s wrong-headed and stupid.

“I can’t imagine anybody working for workforce wellbeing in the whole of the world who will think this is a good idea, to cancel a service that’s working perfectly well while you have a think about whether you want to continue funding it.

“It’s ludicrous.”

Dr Bailey said the service was originally set up following the tragic death of a hospital doctor who was unable to access confidential help for her mental illness.

He said: “If someone like her were to call Practitioner Health on Monday, she would be turned away.”

Support for doctors

Another doctor who works for NHS Practitioner Health but wanted to remain anonymous said: “For six months it’s likely there will be no support via Practitioner Health for addicted or suicidal hospital doctors.

“It’s clear people will be rejected from Monday

“This is due to new commissioners, lack of funding, and poor awareness of the importance of supporting clinicians, not only for their own health but for patient safety issues.”

More than 32,000 doctors and healthcare professionals have been treated by the service since it was founded in 2008.

Ms Fernandes said: “To pull out a major support service for hospital-based doctors seems rather cruel. We’re calling on the commissioners to reverse the decision.

“The funding of this service will be tiny in comparison to the NHS budget but the work it does is huge.”

We’ve contacted the GMC for help on the issue.

In a statement, Practitioner Health said: “We have been in discussion with NHS England over arrangements for the service from 1 April 2024 and want to reassure all patients who are already registered with the service that this does not alter your situation. We will continue to support all existing patients to complete their treatment.

“NHS England are undertaking a review of the staff support offer for mental health across all staff groups to consider long term sustainable options. We will contribute to the review.

“On this basis we have agreed with NHS England to halt new registrations for secondary care staff from 15 April 2024 onwards. New secondary care patients will be signposted to alternative sources of support, including your GP, occupational health departments and organisational employee assistance programmes.

“The arrangements for the primary care element of Practitioner Health have been extended for a further 12 months to 31 March 2025.”

Senior doctors and nurses have condemned abuse directed at healthcare workers after the head of the Royal College of Midwives received death threats for encouraging pregnant women to have the Covid vaccine.

Health organisations that represent hundreds of thousands of NHS staff are speaking out against a “sinister tide” of abuse and aggression they say has grown in the past few months.

In a letter published in The Times today, the group, which includes the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the NHS Confederation, the Royal College of Midwives and Unison, hit back at a “small, aggressive minority”.

“As health and care professionals, we have been moved by the support given to us by the public throughout the pandemic. However, a small but sinister tide has been rising of people who, at best, seek to undermine the important public health advice we give, and, at worst, incite abuse and violence against us,” they write.

This week Gill Walton, chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, was subjected to death threats and abusive messages likening her to the child killer Myra Hindley. She had made a public call for pregnant women to come forward for vaccination.

Ruth May, the NHS chief nursing officer for England, said the abuse was unacceptable while Dr Ellen Welch, of the Doctors’ Association UK, said it had become endemic.

She added: “As a GP, the false stories about primary care being closed all year have become fact for many, and I start a shift almost expecting a confrontation. Staff have been physically and verbally assaulted and one surgery was even subject to an arson attack. This needs to stop.”

Read the full story in The Times here