Enabling Leaders to Change: interventions with established GP principals through a mid-career break scheme

Medicine features ahead of many other professions in terms of stress. This has been well documented and is reported in the literature as contributing to a high incidence of depression, suicide, social isolation, alcoholism and drug abuse (Quill and Williamson, 1990, Johnson, 1991). However stress at work is a complex problem especially for GPs. Work in the 1980s found that the main sources of stress for GPs included risk management of patients, isolation, poor relationships with other doctors and disillusionment with the growing awareness of the change in the role of the OP (Braithwaite and Ross, 1988).