Editor’s Choice: Caring for doctors

As new foundation doctors prepare to start their medical careers next Wednesday, BMJ Careers offers some guidance to those facing their first day as doctors and considers how medicine compares with other careers.

Taking a cue from the #tipsfornewdocs hashtag used in social media in the past few years, Nicola Lennard offers advice to new foundation doctors (http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/Tips_for_new_doctors). A recurring theme across her recommendations is that of ensuring that communication leads to understanding. “Be clear about the limits of your knowledge and make reasonable checks to make sure any information you give is accurate,” she says in one of her tips.

Ellie Galloway and Mike Denning look at whether being a doctor is more stressful than other jobs, and they do so by comparing it with their own previous experiences of working in other careers (http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/Is_being_a_doctor_more_stressful_than_other_jobs%3F). Between the two of them they have worked as a nurse, midwife, police officer, event organiser, military helicopter pilot, and paramedic and so have considerable experience of other stressful jobs.

“We’ve both done some interesting and difficult jobs in the past, but this is the toughest by far,” they say. “Some work stress is inevitable but other professions seem to do more to minimise the impact on their frontline staff. Surely we in medicine should take similar care?”

The dispute over the junior doctor contract has shone a light on how much work needs to be put into improving junior doctors’ working lives, and the government has pledged to work on tackling issues—beyond terms and conditions—that make junior doctors’ jobs stressful. It would be good if those efforts were informed by evidence of what has worked in other sectors.