Psychiatrists have called on the government to put in place better mental health support for NHS frontline staff.
The call from Dr Lade Smith, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has followed a pledge by health secretary Wes Streeting to do more to tackle violence, improve working lives and enhance career progression within the health service.
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The Department of Health and Social Care earlier this month outlined a range of measures, including improved reporting and prevention of violence and aggression for NHS workers.
Further measures, all as part of the government’s response to a range of recommendations under the Agenda for Change contract, included ensuring NHS workers are paid correctly for the work they are asked to deliver.
Dr Smith said the college welcomed any moves to improve reporting and prevention of violence and aggression against NHS workers.
“Healthcare professionals cannot be expected to come to work and do the best for their patients in an environment where they experience threats, violence and abusive behaviour,” she said.
“More than one in 10 mental health staff have personally experienced physical violence at work from members of the public in the last 12 months. In addition to the physical harm this can cause, there are longer-term psychological harms which can affect their ability to function at work as well as impacting retention,” she added.
However, in addition to being able to access physical health support, the government needed to ensure that NHS staff are able to access “comprehensive” mental health and wellbeing support, Dr Smith emphasised.
“At a national level, we are calling for recurrent funding of £40m that is ring-fenced to meet the mental health needs of NHS staff across England. This would be enough to maintain staff mental health and wellbeing hubs,” she said.
“As well as violence and aggression, staff are regularly impacted by experiences of racism and discrimination. We are calling on healthcare provider organisations to tackle this by taking a zero-tolerance approach to racist behaviour,” Dr Smith added.
According to the NHS, a quarter of staff experienced at least one incident of harassment, bullying or abuse in the past 12 months. Yet many incidents currently go unreported, hampering efforts to address the problem systematically.
The new measures pledged are designed to encourage staff to report incidents of violence or aggression towards them, and to make it mandatory for the reports to be collected at a national level.
Data will also be analysed to better understand if certain staff groups – whether by race, gender, disability status or role – face disproportionate risks, allowing trusts to protect the most vulnerable workers, the DHSC added.
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