Adam Kay highlighted a very real theme - that of the suicide incidence of healthcare professionals

Whilst  articles are published, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests show startling data and the regulators publish suicides during FtP investigations on their annual reports, there is nothing done to safeguard this worrying trend.

We did a FOI with the NMC in September 2019 to find our how many nurses died by suicide whilst under investigation from 2015/16 to Sept 2019. We were told that 15 had had their cases closed because they have taken their own lives. Whilst it is not known if there were other factors which triggered this there is no other information to gain to determine if  registrants were assessed for suicide risk and any attempts made to safeguard them. Our own experience is that nurses and midwives are scared to be open about mental health issues for fear of it negatively affecting their case.

Whilst the NMC open the CIC counselling service, there is to date no work being done on the nature of referrals for these registrants, what the outcome may have been ( would they have got a no case to answer for example ), did they have pre existing MH issues.

So much more needs to be done to address this very real issue affecting our professionals.