Doctors raise alarm over 'moral distress' from NHS overstretch

Two-thirds of British doctors are suffering “moral distress” caused by the enfeebled state of the NHS and the damage the cost of living crisis is inflicting on patients’ health, research has found.

Large numbers are ending up psychologically damaged, feeling they cannot give patients the best possible care because of problems they cannot overcome, such as long waits for treatment or lack of drugs or the fact someone’s poverty or bad housing is making them ill.

The survey found 65% of doctors overall, including nearly four in five (78%) GPs and more than half (56%) of hospital doctors, have experienced “moral distress” as a direct result of situations they have encountered working in the NHS.

Seeing patients with malnutrition or hypothermia, or stuck on trolleys in A&E corridors asking for help or forced to choose between heating their home or getting a prescription dispensed are among the events triggering their distress, medics said.

“There’s barely a doctor at work in the NHS today who doesn’t see or experience this distress on a daily basis,” said Prof Philip Banfield, the leader of the British Medical Association. The NHS was “impossibly overstretched”, had thousands of vacancies for doctors and also had a quarter fewer doctors per head of population than in Germany, he added.

“In practice that means we can almost never give the standard of care we would want, only ever the care we can manage. That takes its toll, as we see here,” Banfield said.