Psychiatrists’ Support Service

Progress report September 2009- June 2010

Introduction

Since its launch at the AGM in 2007, the Psychiatrists’ Support Service (PSS) has been contacted by over 230 members of the College experiencing difficulties. These have included doctors across all grades and from all psychiatric specialities. The range of difficulties include: bullying and harassment, career pathway issues, disciplinary matters, involvement with the General Medical Council or the National Clinical Assessment Service and workplace relationship difficulties, (this is not an exhaustive list). This report refers to the period of September 2009 until May 2010.

Developments

The Committee and Doctor Advisers

The service has a total of 14 doctor advisers some of whom are Committee members, with the remainder as a wider network of support. At joint meetings, these individuals are given training and updates that are relevant to their role for PSS and this has included; mentoring training, a session on professionalism and the role of the psychiatrist from Professor Dinesh Bhugra as well as informal presentations from external organisations that the service has links with such as the British Medical Association and the General Medical Council. In September 2010, doctor advisers will have presentations from the Chief Executive of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and Professor Debbie Cohen from the Individual Support Programme in Wales.

Interviews for an extra trainee member for the Committee will take place in July 2010, to assist the existing trainee member in providing support to trainees in difficulty. The College Professional Standards department also provides assistance to trainees that contact the service.

International work

The Associate Registrar is due to attend an International Advisory Chairs meeting in October to discuss how the service can work more closely with our international members. The International Chairs have received a letter and information material about the service. To date, 3 international contacts have been received by the service.

A framework for other Colleges

In February 2010, the service wrote to the Presidents and Chief Executives of the other Royal Medical Colleges to raise the service profile and offer their support in talking to them about the potential for developing their own services. The Associate Registrar Psychiatrists’ Support Service Manager will attend a College Officers Meeting at the Royal College of Physicians in July to share their experiences of developing a support service for psychiatrists.

An article is due to appear in the British Medical Journal Careers section in the coming weeks as a framework for other Colleges to adopt. This includes information about how the service was developed, how it works as well as information about feedback from doctors who use the service.

European Association for Physician Health

The Associate Registrar is a member of this network, developed in 2008 and attended their first meeting in Oslo in October 2009. It aims to encourage a universally higher standard of support for doctors in difficulty across the continent by providing a forum for the following activities:

  • Share expertise and good practice on the treatment of doctors by doctors
  • Influence and encourage the development of health services for doctors
  • Undertake joint research on the health and well being of doctors

The next meeting is due to take place in Barcelona in November 2010.

Information guides and other service information

A further two have been developed on a career in medical management and one on stalking. Guides under development include working with difficult colleagues and addictions.

The process of reviewing some of the older information guides have commenced with the organisations who originally assisted in writing them. The first to be reviewed are the ones on exclusion, coping with complaints and whistleblowing/passing on concerns.

The general service information leaflet is updated as and when required as well as the resource booklet that contains information about other services and organisations that exist to support doctors. Doctors who contact the service are sent a copy of these (if they do not already have one).

Marketing and promotion of the service

The service has employed and continues to use various methods to raise its profile amongst the membership as follows:

  • Attendance at the 2010 International Congress in Edinburgh on the College stand – a workshop on the Professional Transition from Trainee to Consultant
  • Presence at national and international conferences
  • Presence at divisional events
  • The internet
  • Mailing to mental health trusts
  • Mutual signposting with organisations such as the BMA Doctors for Doctors Service, National Clinical Assessment service
  • Divisional newsletters
  • College e newsletter
  • Inclusion of PSS information in new member information packs
  • Via other College departments
  • A bulk email to the membership
  • Advertisements in College publications
  • Display of PSS material in the College reception area and the library
  • Other websites such as the support4doctors and the London mentoring scheme

Doctors who contact the service are asked how they heard about PSS and it is apparent that the above methods of marketing have been and continue to be successful, as well as word of mouth. The feedback from divisional events has also been positive as the service is approached by doctors who had not previously heard of the service.

External organisations

The service continues to have close links with the BMA Doctors for Doctors service in terms of mutual signposting, and attendance at their events. PSS has been present at a series of regional meetings for GMC Medical Examiners and Supervisors during April and May 2010. The purpose of these meetings is to raise the service profile, discuss developments at the GMC such as revalidation, enhance practitioners skills and awareness around issued arising from GMC work and promote cased based discussion.

One of the doctor advisers to the service works for the Practitioner Health Programme and therefore provides an update to the Committee about the developments in this service on a regular basis.

International Congress

The PSS will have a presence at the College stand on the member information area. A member of the PSS Committee will be involved in the Doctors for Doctors workshop to present information about the service. Some of the doctor advisers will conduct a workshop on the Professional Transition from Trainee to Consultant.

Accreditation

The service is currently working towards achieving accreditation status Telephone Helplines Association and hopes to achieve this by the end of 2010. The THA accredit all major helplines in the United Kingdom such as the Samaritans and Cancer UK.

Statistics

During the period of September 2009 – May 2010, 5 of the doctors included in the figures presented here are previous callers to the service. 68 calls were received in this period. Information relating to two calls is unknown as these were messages left on the service voicemail and no further information was available despite calls back to these doctors.

The most common reason for doctors calling the service is associated with workplace difficulty at 29%, followed by career pathway issues – 17% and bullying and harassment at 11%.

Gender

Calls were received from 31 females and 35 males.

Grade

23 of the calls were from females and 43 were from males.

Average number of contacts

The PSS is not a counselling service, its main aim is to help doctors to help themselves in the most appropriate and effective way possible. Often issues can be resolved with a single contact. The average number of contacts a doctor receives is 3. This will normally be by telephone, with the occasional email contact.

Time trial

For a three month period in 2010, the service conducted a brief trial on the length of time taken on calls from doctor advisers to the doctors they are providing support and advice to. The average length of time for such calls was approximately 30 minutes. This does not include the time that doctor advisers can sometimes spend on preparing for a call, conducting research on the internet in preparation or reflection time after a call.

Signposting

A small percentage of calls are signposted to internal College departments or external organisations if appropriate:

  • British Medical Association
  • College Examinations department
  • College Professional Standards department
  • General Practitioner
  • Local Division for a mentor or a treating doctor
  • Mednet – Psychotherapy service for doctors in the London deanery area
  • Practitioners Health Programme
  • National Clinical Assessment Service
  • Royal Medical Benevolent Fund

These organisations are listed in the PSS resource booklet and the website has links to them.

Evaluation

All doctors that come into contact with the service are sent an evaluation form once their individual case has been closed. Some of the comments are included below:

Thank you for your help. I am very pleased with the support and advice you gave.

Thank you very much indeed for the help. I was feeling rather isolated with the problem I am faced with and it was most reassuring and helpful to find the RoyalCollege had a service to offer.

I think the College Support Service fills a gap in service provision for psychiatrists facing disciplinary proceedings etc. I discovered there were many options to support ‘sick’ doctors with physical, mental or addiction problems but nothing specialist enough for a psychiatrist facing a complaint relating to service provision for a complex psychiatric case

Everybody who dealt with me did so professionally, sensitively, intelligently and in a timely manner. It really helped me get my head around my problem – now I am hopefully on my way to resolving it.

Non PSS calls

Since September 2009, the service has received a total of 8 calls that are not from College members, or associated with the PSS. These callers are re-directed to other College departments or external organisations if appropriate.

Website

The Psychiatrists’ Support Service general website pages have received a total of 2462 hitssince January 2010. On average individuals spend 3 minutes and 11 seconds on the general information pages. A link from the trainee web pages to the PSS web pages is provided, and analyis of these hits show that the average time spent on the trainee page is 5 minutes.

Summary

In summary, the service continues to be successful and provide a service to doctors who are members of the College in professional difficulty.

The PSS is a unique service for psychiatrists. Data included in this report demonstrates that the PSS continues to be widely used and appreciated by members of the College. We are confident that this will continue in 2010 and beyond.

Pete Snowden

01 June 2010

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