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Autonomy, Belonging, Competence. GMC reports on the ABC of wellbeing.

Caring for doctors Caring for patients: An independent report into the wellbeing of UK medical students and doctors.

"In 2018 we commissioned Professor Michael West and Dame Denise Coia, to carry out a UK-wide review to help tackle the causes of poor wellbeing faced by medical students and doctors.

Professor Michael West tweeted, "Today, Dame Denise Coia & I have published our independent report into the wellbeing of doctors & med students. We hope this will be a springboard for change to deliver the compassionate cultures that the profession & patients deserve."

The report, Caring for doctors, Caring for patients, includes eight recommendations to help deliver safe, supportive and inclusive environments, and compassionate cultures across the UK."

The authors outline the three core factors that doctors and medical students need to experience in the workplace along with eight recommendations.

Autonomy/control – the need to have some control over their working lives.

Voice, influence and fairness – to introduce mechanisms for doctors to influence the culture of their healthcare organisations and decisions about how medicine is delivered.

Work conditions – to introduce UK-wide minimum standards for basic facilities in healthcare organisations.

Work schedule and rotas - To introduce UK-wide standards for the development and maintenance of work schedules and rotas based on realistic forecasting that supports safe shift swapping, enables breaks, takes account of fatigue and involves doctors with knowledge of the specialty to consider the demands that will be placed on them.

Belonging – the need to feel part of a supportive, effective and connected team.

Team working – to develop and support effective multidisciplinary team working across the healthcare service.

Culture and leadership – to implement a programme to ensure healthcare environments have nurturing cultures enabling high-quality, continually improving and compassionate patient care and staff wellbeing.

Competence – when doctors feel enabled in their role and deliver clear outcomes, such as high-quality care.

Workload – to tackle the fundamental problems of excessive work demands in medicine that exceed the capacity of doctors to deliver high-quality safe care.

Management and supervision – to ensure all doctors have effective clinical, educational and pastoral support and supervision to thrive in their roles.

Training, learning and development – to ensure the systems and frameworks for learning, training and development.

Source: www.gmc-uk.org

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