The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of all of us working in the NHS, with many of us experiencing major disruption to our work and home lives.
NHS CHECK is a major study of everyone in your Trust and selected others, finding out how this pandemic is impacting on the health and wellbeing of staff. Your input will help us understand how better to prepare and support you and your colleagues now and in the future.
You can take part here. You can also download the information sheet or contact the team here.
When you sign up to NHS CHECK you will be asked to fill in a 5-10 minute confidential survey asking about you, your work and your health. There is also a longer survey too, we would encourage you to complete it if you have time. We will get in touch with you in about 3, 12 and 18 months time to find out how you are doing. These will help us understand how things change for you and your colleagues over time.
Cardiff Nightingale Hospital, Exeter Nightingale Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Harrogate Nightingale Hospital, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, King’s Health Partners, London ExCeL Nightingale Hospital, Manchester Nightingale Hospital, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
The NHS website at www.people.nhs.uk contains resources for supporting your mental health and also has a dedicated helpline for NHS staff affected by COVID-19 (coronavirus). To contact the NHS helpline, phone 0300 131 7000, or text FRONTLINE to 85258.
MIND’s website at www.mind.org.uk has useful resources to help you cope if you are feeling anxious, worried or isolated.
See Samaritans at www.samaritans.org if you are worried about your mental health. You can also call the Samaritans day or night if you need someone to talk to without judgement on 116 123.
The World Health Organization at www.who.int has a document detailing mental health and psychosocial considerations during this outbreak.
We take your health and wellbeing very seriously, and should you have any questions or concerns, please contact the research team.
NHS CHECK is a collaborative effort led by a research team at King’s College London and King’s Health Partners supported by expert clinicians, frontline staff and researchers across different NHS Trusts and Universities, and the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.
Professor of Psychological Medicine at King’s College London, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a consultant psychiatrist at King’s College Hospital and at the Maudsley Hospital, where he practices liaison psychiatry. Professor Wessely’s principal research interests are the nature and treatment of medically unexplained symptoms and syndromes, clinical epidemiology and military health. He has published more than 650 peer reviewed academic papers in these fields and has received over £20million in research funding. As well as being Head of the Academic Department of Psychological Medicine at King’s College London (to 2014), he has founded or co-founded research units focusing on chronic fatigue syndrome, gulf war illnesses, clinical trial methods and military health. As a result of his research work he has been appointed as a Foundation Senior Investigator for England’s National Institute for Health Research, he serves on numerous government committees for the Department of Health, Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence and he sits on the World Health Organization work group for stress-related disorders.
Professor Matthew Hotopf is Vice Dean of Research at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, and Director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). Matthew’s main area of research is in the grey area between medicine and psychiatry, exploring the interaction between mental and physical health, and uses “big data” approaches to understand this interface better. He works clinically as a liaison psychiatrist St Christopher’s Hospice, is an NIHR Senior Investigator and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was awarded a CBE in June 2018.
Professor Reza Razavi is the Vice President & Vice-Principal of Research at King's College London and the Director of Research at King’s Health Partners. He is also the Director of the King’s Wellcome Trust EPSRC Centre For Medical Engineering. The main focus of his research is imaging and biomedical engineering related to cardiovascular disease.
Professor Neil Greenberg is a consultant academic, occupational and forensic psychiatrist based at King’s College London. Neil served in the United Kingdom Armed Forces for more than 23 years and has deployed, as a psychiatrist and researcher, to a number of hostile environments including Afghanistan and Iraq. At King’s Neil leads on a number of military mental health projects and is a principal investigator within a nationally funded Health Protection Research unit. He also chairs the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) Special Interest Group in Occupational Psychiatry. Neil has published more than 250 scientific papers and book chapters and has been the Secretary of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the President of the UK Psychological Trauma Society and Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee.
Dr Sharon Stevelink is a Lecturer in Epidemiology and she is part of the Department of Psychological Medicine and King’s Centre for Military Health Research, King’s College London. She is driving a research agenda exploring occupational mental health. She is especially interested in how working in high risk occupations, such as the military, police force, fire brigade and ambulance services, impacts on the mental health of people working in these jobs, what can be done to foster resilience and how help-seeking for mental health problems can be encouraged. Her research findings informed policy and service delivery concerning the mental health provision for serving and ex-serving military personnel.Further, she is the Principal Investigator of the Occupation and PsychiaTrIc Morbidity consortiUM (OPTIMUM). This consortium drives data linkages and uses routinely collected mental health and other data to advance our understanding about the relationships of welfare and occupational status with mental disorders, treatment, well-being and recovery.
Rosalind is Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Health Research at UCL, a public health medicine doctor, Director of NIHR ARC North Thames (Europe’s largest partnership of world leading applied health and care researchers) and Vice Director of NIHR Cancer Policy Research Unit.She is recognised as a world leading applied researcher with expertise in the evaluation of major health service/ public health change, of digital health innovations and of determinants of widespread implementation of evidence based care. She integrates diverse techniques including complex data analysis and ethnography to examine the impact of health/public health interventions on health outcomes, health inequalities, health care quality and costs. Rosalind is an elected member of NIHR Strategy Board and of the Lancet Commission on The Future of the NHS. She advises on health policy internationally, nationally and regionally; chaired the UK Heads of Academic Departments of Public Health (representing Departments at over 30 universities) and sat on the HEFCE Research Excellence Framework Panel. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, selected as an NIHR Senior Investigator and, by NIHR as one of the countries ‘leading edge scientists’. She was also selected by the British Medical Association as one of 29 national role models in academic medicine. She has been awarded four personal MRC/NIHR Fellowships.
Dr Sean Cross, Professor Chris Dickens, Dr Amy Dewar, Dr Mary Docherty, Dr Sarah Dorrington, Dr Sam Gnanapragasam, Professor Damien Longson, Dr Ira Madan, Dr Isabel McMullen, Dr Dominic Murphy, Dr Martin Parsons, Dr Catherine Polling, Prof Anne Marie Rafferty, Prof Anthony David, Professor Tayyeb Tahir, Dr Peter Trigwell.
Gabriella Bergin-Cartwright, Nicol Bergou, Danielle Lamb, Haifa Issa, Dr Howard Burdett, Rupa Bhundia, Dr Ewan Carr, Melanie Chesnokov, Dr Katrina Davis, Dr John Hodsoll, Dr Daniel Leightley, Lucy O’Neill, David Pernet, Danai Serfioti and Alice Wickersham.
This work was supported by seed funding from the King’s Together Fund and King’s College London. The King’s Together Fund is part of the King’s Together Multi and Interdisciplinary Research Scheme that is funded by the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund. The study also received seed funding from the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response.
