NHS Check study to explore virus effect on NHS staff

NHS Check will explore how the coronavirus pandemic disrupts the work of NHS staff to identify how best to support acute hospital staff during pandemics.

During the pandemic, many NHS staff will have to make difficult choices they have not before faced, to deliver care which they know is suboptimal and explain this to relatives. These ethical dilemmas will be new and will likely result in some staff experiencing moral injury. Originating in the military, moral injury describes the psychological distress resulting from actions, or the lack of them, which violate someone’s moral or ethical code.

The NHS Check project will explore how a range of individual factors may influence the experience of moral injury in staff, examining everything from professional culture, organisational preparation, team leadership, quality and honesty of staff briefings, and formal training and interventions.

Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine at King’s College London, and lead of the study, said: “NHS Check has a large and defined sample; the study is specifically trying to recruit people from diverse backgrounds and roles and tries to balance both the negative and positive aspects of the current Covid-19 crisis on staff.”

King's College London’s Neil Greenberg said: “We know that some NHS staff will unfortunately develop mental health difficulties as a result of their important work; however, others will no doubt thrive on the challenge and may experience post-traumatic growth. NHS Check is a really important way to properly understand the impact on staff and identify which of the many supportive measures that were put in place may have been helpful.”