Evaluation of NHS Practitioner Health: capturing mental health outcomes using five instruments

NHS Practitioner Health is the England wide programme providing mental health and addiction healthcare to doctors and dentists. Outcomes are assessed using five measures.

To contribute to a service evaluation of NHS Practitioner Health. To determine responsiveness to change and compare outcome measures.

Measures were completed at baseline and 6 months: Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Patient Health Questionaire-9 (PHQ-9), Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing scale (WEMWBS), Psychological Outcome Profiles (PSYCHLOPS). Responsiveness to change was determined using effect size with improvement threshold ≥0.80. Instruments were compared using Bland-Altman plots.

Our sample, n = 402; with 14 (3.5%) excluded for missing data; final sample, n = 388. All measures showed strong mean effect sizes: PSYCHLOPS 1.86 (95%CI 1.73-1.99), 75.8% ≥0.80; PSS 1.48 (1.34-1.62), 64.4% ≥0.80; WEMWBS 1.24 (1.13-1.35), 58.2% ≥0.80; GAD-7 1.07 (0.96-1.18), 52.8% ≥0.80; PHQ-9 0.86 (0.76-0.96), 52.8% ≥0.80. Findings were largely unchanged after stratification by diagnosis, presenting problem or therapy type. Fifty (12.9%) participants did not reach the threshold for improvement on any instrument. Bland-Altman plots indicated generally strong agreement between measures; combining PSYCHLOPS with WEMWBS maximised capture of improvement with only 3.6% of patients lying outside limits of agreement; GAD-7 was most likely to duplicate recovery scores of other measures.

Patients attending the NHS Practitioner Health service demonstrated high levels of improvement in mental health scores. The patient-generated instrument produced higher change scores than standardised instruments. Combining PSYCHLOPS and WEMWBS captured 96% of patients with above threshold improvement; GAD-7 added little to overall recovery measurement.