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<p>Improving the mental health of our National Health Service staff including doctors
is a top priority. Last year, NHS England announced the expansion of the Practitioner
Health Programme, a free and confidential NHS service to treat doctors’ mental health
or addiction problems, in particular where these might affect their work.</p><p>The
Department also continues to discuss doctors’ contractual terms and conditions of
service with the British Medical Association and employers to ensure they are up to
date, fit for purpose helping protect their mental health and wellbeing through negotiated
improvements.</p><p>As set out in the interim NHS People Plan, like all NHS staff,
doctors should benefit from NHS work over the summer to “develop a new offer with
staff setting out explicitly the support they can expect from the NHS as a modern
employer” including ensuring everyone feels they have voice, control and influence,
which covers staff mental health and wellbeing. This will be published after the Spending
Review and could include implementation of recommendations from Health Education England’s
NHS Staff and Learner Mental Wellbeing Programme report such as introducing Well Being
Guardians in NHS trusts, personal wellbeing supervisors for learners including doctors
in training, NHS organisations independently examining the death by suicide of any
member of NHS staff or learner working in the NHS and “safe spaces” accessible to
all for reflection, learning and breaks.</p><p>The new offer will build on the progress
being made in implementing the NHS staff health and wellbeing framework which provides
organisations with diagnostic and intervention options to help them provide the mental
health services their staff need such as counselling and talking therapies. The Framework
and NHS Improvement’s s staff health and wellbeing collaborative of 73 trusts embed
the mental health standards set out in ‘Thriving at Work – a review of mental health
and employers’ commissioned by the Government. Implementing ‘Thriving at Work’ is
a requirement under the NHS Standard contract.</p><p>NHS England’s 2017/19 Commissioning
for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) Incentive scheme has been encouraging trusts to
improve the services they provide to help staff mental health with payments for improvement
in the percentage of staff answering “no” to the NHS Staff Survey question “During
the last 12 months have you felt unwell as a result of work related stress?”</p>
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