The Wellbeing Toolkit for Doctors: A Supportive Guide to Help Everyone Working in Healthcare

This is the only practical guide to overcoming anxiety, compassion fatigue and other challenges of day-to-day life on the front line of healthcare.

The Wellbeing Toolkit for Doctors offers tools to help doctors prevent burnout, and enjoy their work again. During stressful times, the practice of self-care becomes vital. The coronavirus pandemic has required new levels of dedication, resilience and hard work, and the mental health impact on health professionals working through it has been immense.

Each chapter is a tool, either conceptual, such as Self-compassion, Peer Support, Racism Awareness, or practical, such as how you can positively influence your workplace environment, or enhance your compassion skills through music and the arts. This timely and thoughtful book offers a balanced overview of the issues currently faced by doctors, alongside stories from patients and other professionals throughout medicine.

Doctors can thrive in their jobs, with the right support in place. This toolkit shows those working in healthcare how to gather the necessary support for their own wellbeing, in order to fully serve those in their care.

Lesley worked as a GP for 25 years. She believes that the role of a doctor is to promote holistic health care and to engage with the wider issues which affect health. She has a longstanding interest in the role of medical humanities in medical education and clinical care, and she is co-editor of Tools of the Trade, a book of poetry gifted to all Scottish medical graduates with the aim of offering support and nurturing creativity. She strongly believes that, in order to care for others, doctors need to care for themselves, and this has never been more true.