Health, Stress and Wellbeing

Even though you are a doctor you should not depend upon your own knowledge, or that of your friends and colleagues for your health needs. You should have an independent General Practitioner (GP) who can prioritise your health needs confidentially and without bias. Hence, all Anaesthesia trainees are required to have their own GP. You can see your GP for all day-to-day health issues, and you may be advised to see your GP for a sick note if your absence is expected to me more than a few days, or you have health issues that will require management outside the workplace environment.

Out of Hours GP access and advice can be obtained by dialling 111 from any UK phone.

Each Trust will have an Occupational Health (OH) service that supports the health of its employees. The exact contact details for each Trust is beyond the scope of this webpage, but you can usually contact you OH department in-hours directly through your Trust's intranet or switchboard. OH can be contacted for health issues related to the workplace e.g. contact dermatitis or as advice regarding needle stick injuries, including Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP). You may be asked to see your OH department after a period of ill health to assess your health needs and to make any reasonable modifications to your work environment, if required.

Medicine as a whole, and Anaesthesia as a career is inherently stressful, and is a job that often leads to people ruminating about decisions made and previous events. One way of helping to address this is via 'Mindfulness'

For a 5 minute introduction to the topic explaining what it is and what it may be good for try the e-LfH module at https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/introduction-to-mindfulness/

After doing that you may want to consider exploring it further and there are many resources both online, in books and on mobile apps that may help you with this.