One-third of UK trainee doctors feel high level of burnout amid Covid | NHS

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A third of trainee doctors in the UK feel exhausted to a high or very high degree amid the Covid pandemic, up from a quarter in previous years, a General Medical Council (GMC) survey found.

Experts said doctors could not continue working at such a high level of intensity, warning that any gains made in recent years in terms of workload and well-being were in danger of being reversed.

The survey found that the GMC’s annual report responses to questions about burnout were the worst since their introduction in 2018.

Previous research has highlighted the problem of burnout among NHS staff, with a committee of MPs saying stress causes some to quit, causing medical errors and endangering patient safety.

The results come amid growing anger over the government’s initial offer of a 1% pay rise that was recently increased to 3%. Many NHS staff have had the toughest year of their careers, battling wave after wave of coronavirus cases.

Charlie Massey, chief executive of GMC, said it was no surprise that burnout had worsened, but doctors could not expect them to continue working at this level of ‘intensity. As health services emerge from Covid, the pressures will remain, but we must not risk reversing the gains that have been made in recent years, he said.

The danger is that if action is not taken, workloads and well-being will continue to suffer, and future burnout rates could worsen.

The annual national survey of regulators on training was carried out by trainees or trainers. Three in five said they always or often felt exhausted at the end of a workday, and 44% felt their work was emotionally exhausting to a high or very high degree.

The trainees’ responses to seven well-being-related questions, across all medical specialties, showed a trend towards negative responses compared to previous years.

Although trainees and trainers reported worsening levels of burnout, the quality of training remained high, similar to pre-pandemic levels. About three-quarters (76%) of trainees rated the quality of teaching as good or very good.

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Eighty-one percent of interns said they were on track to achieve their academic program results for the year, although one in ten, a substantial number in real terms, were concerned. of the progress of his training.

Dr Rowan Gossedge, a registrar of acute medicine in the east of England, said many trainees will bear various covid scars for a long time.

There will be few people who left April of last year without some form of burnout or burnout. It was a completely strange and different time and we saw the best and the worst of people, he said, adding that burnout manifests in different ways, like people hooking up with coworkers, emotionally disengaged. or simply showing exhaustion and illness.

If you think about it, the difference between mid-March and August, many of us were constantly working long days or long nights, in constant cycles. For me, we would either have a long day or recover or have a night shift to the point where you felt constantly jet lagged. Then in August, it was the restart of operations, where we went back to reorganizing the NHS a bit, so there was no need to recover. Then winter hit and it was as bad as we thought it would be, he said, adding that the staff hadn’t had a chance to take a break.

He said he hopes hospitals will look at structures and improve staff support, which is now happening in other companies or in the private sector.

Massey said: The pandemic has caused inevitable disruption and some training opportunities have been lost. But, thanks to the efforts and hard work of the trainers and trainees, where training has been possible, the quality has been maintained.

We know that many trainees remain concerned with the progress of their training, so we work hard to ensure that training is flexible, fair, and helps prepare physicians to meet current and future patient needs.

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