What is the ICGP Doctors Health in Practice programme?

This programme is delivered through the membership services committee as a benefit of ICGP membership. Members may contact the service by telephone, by text and by email, to discuss their own health and wellbeing concerns or concerns they may have for a colleagues' health. Calls are received from GPs who are seeking clinical guidance on treating a doctor under their care, whether that doctor is a specialist, a GP, an NCHD, a medical student or trainee. Calls are also received in confidence from other health professionals who have concerns for the health and wellbeing of GPs.

One of the core activities of the programme is to encourage each GP to attend another GP on a professional basis for their own healthcare and to avoid self-diagnosis, self-treatment and self-referral. Sometimes the GP or GP Trainee needs to discuss their options before they engage formally as a patient, adjusting to being on the receiving end of medical assessments and healthcare from another doctor. The helpline is not an emergency medical service, or a fast tracking referral service, those requests should be put through your GP in the same way as other patients request these services from their GP. The programme has a small number of GP leaders in doctors healthcare who can support other GPs in this sometimes sensitive area. However, the majority of GPs and Trainees who attend other Gps do so for all the normal range of problems the general population attends GPs for.

The programme also coordinates medical education sessions on the doctors health and wellbeing for ICGP events and acts as a resource to individual GPs and groups