You feel unsupported because you are unsupported. You're working in a system that has too few people.
My name is Charlotte and I'm currently a junior doctor specialising in anaesthetics.
The commute home and I'm often just quite tired.
In the run-up to leaving work there's the job of finding the appropriate person to hand over to
that's been a real hurdle for me to get over. Feeling responsible for the decisions that other
people made about patients that I had perhaps handed over.
The study was interested in looking at
working conditions and cultures and their impacts on the mental health
of junior doctors working in the NHS.
I would come home maybe from
an 11 o'clock or midnight finish. What I knew was going to happen was I was going to
get into bed and I was going to try to fall asleep and not going to be able to fall asleep.
Or in my dreams I would be transported straight back to work.
I had a discussion with a senior colleague and I just broke down.
So this is a blanket that I crocheted whilst I was on sick leave. It was her who made me see
that actually I wasn't well and I kind of didn't believe her because I talked to so many people
who felt similar things to me.
What I normally like to do to save me from just constantly checking my phone is to do something with my hands which usually involves something like
crocheting.
Junior doctors were telling us that the main causes of stress and distress were around toxic work cultures, poor working conditions, high workloads
lack of support and a culture of unvulnerability. I kind of just thought well you know this is
normal and I'm just not coping with it but then at the back of my mind I was thinking
if this is normal and everyone goes through this but this is how I'm reacting
how am I ever going to get through this. Evidence suggests that Doctors who work over 55 hours are
twice as likely to develop a mental health problem and are more likely to make a medical error.
My role in the study has been to, um, provide a junior doctor perspective.
The survey reported that you know 70% of doctors experienced extreme or severely extreme levels of stress,
anxiety and depression and over half of those had experienced suicidal thoughts
feelings. Some had self-harm or had made sadly suicide attempts.
I mean I had a friend who was a doctor and who committed suicide. It was not purely due to work but there were definitely aspects at
work which, um, contributed towards, uh, her feelings of anxiety and distress she was struggling with, um,
being very worried about whether she'd done the right thing or made the right decisions and
that can then spill over from work and to home and just really make it difficult to leave your work
at work.
I much prefer Yorkshire Tea, um, sometimes the frustration at myself would just get so much I would just dig my fingernails into my palms.
So the impetus from the study, um, was interested in
exploring and understanding why there were slightly elevated rates of suicide
amongst female doctors.
It would be naive to suggest there isn't a difference
between the ways that male and female junior doctors are treated.
I do think that there is more of an expectation when you are a female doctor,
in the more sort of caring aspects of the job.
Interestingly three quarters of the participants in the qualitative study and the survey were female doctors and again is that because women
are more likely to come forward and you know talk about their mental health compared to
men or does it reflect you know increased levels of mental illness amongst women.
And I have friends who left the country. The stress on junior doctors will cause there to be fewer junior doctors
and that will result in poorer care. These are a couple of the journals that I started keeping
as part of seeking treatment for, um, my mental health. I have had very good support from my own GP
and then also a GP I was able to talk to through the practitioner health programme. I've
had support from occupational health.
I think shame is a big issue in medicine
and it starts at medical school the internalisation of that shame and that perceived
inability to cope it prevents help seeking.
The NHS is is a national kind of government-led system
which has a limited budget and limited resources. Then there are significant workforce
gaps, um, in the NHS at all kind of professions and all staff at all levels.
In terms of addressing the culture of invulnerability I think it needs to start at medical school and there's
there's currently I think there's an over focus on individual resilience.
I just hope that everyone in
the healthcare system are all able to offer each other some more compassion.
Really important that senior doctors do not lose their compassion that they do have because of the
pressures that the system is putting on them.
It's about systemic changes we all want to help people
but we can't do that at the expense of our own lives.