Ask a Doctor: Healing the Healers is a promotional film intended to be viewed by healthcare audiences both online and at key industry events to challenge the industry stigmas that force thousands of healthcare professionals to hide their struggles with mental disorders, stress and suicidal thoughts in order to maintain their career and status.

All campaign materials were subjected to a thorough internal agency compliance review in line with MHRA and ABPI requirements for disease awareness campaigns. Every care has been taken to ensure that all materials are non-promotional in nature and intent and that they do not either directly or indirectly promote the use of any specific drug or class of drugs to the public.

Today, burn out is widely recognised as a medical disorder by mainstream medicine however, in many countries, healthcare professionals are asked to declare any mental health issues in the same category as criminal activity. Which means they run the risk of having their license to practise revoked if they reveal their hidden struggles. Stigma such as this is why we are currently witnessing the fastest deterioration of healthcare worker wellbeing in history. On average 2 healthcare professionals take their life every 2 weeks in the UK and it’s estimated that a staggering 400 doctors die by suicide in the USA alone every year. Asking for help is not an option for these people, but it’s the key to starting change.

As a business, we exist at the crossroads of pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professionals, and non-profit organisations. It’s vital to our entire eco-system that the people who provide the care on the frontlines are not overlooked but instead fully supported to do their jobs and able to ask for help.

Medical advertising in the UK is primarily controlled through a system of self-regulation via the ABPI code of practice, underpinned by government guidance from the MHRA. Disease awareness campaigns must be accurate, fair and capable of substantiation. They cannot be disguised promotion or advertise prescription only medicine to the public.

The target audience are healthcare professionals across the industry. Whether they are one of the many who are hiding a medical disorder or they’re one of the lucky who aren’t, only when we raise awareness of the issues can the entire industry begin to heal and help each other.

If you want advice on medication, you ask a doctor. If you want to talk to someone about aches and pains, you ask a doctor. You ask a doctor because you assume they’re the experts on such things through experience or education. But what else has their experience made them experts on? This film pulls back the curtain on the hidden challenges doctors and healthcare professionals deal with daily, piecing together a life of stress, burnout and eventual suicide. We move through the stacking burdens of their lives until we come face to face with the weight of it all in a doctor’s eyes. After this moment of despair, when everything seems at its bleakest, we introduce hope as we propose a new question to ask a doctor: how can we help?

In our unique position situated at the crossroads of pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professionals, and non-profit organisations, we recently noticed the rising trend of mental disorders and depression among healthcare professionals (HCPs) worldwide. To find out why, we conducted research with over 2500 HCPs to hear their experiences first hand. Once we had the worrying data, the brief was to raise the industry’s consciousness around the issues, with an objective to build a platform for HCPs to tell their truth and rally others to join our campaign for awareness.

Objectives

The objective of Healing the Healers: Ask a Doctor was to create an eye-opening look at the true lives of healthcare workers and wake stakeholders up to the fact so many are forced to deal with struggles in silence. Launching online and premiering at key industry events, we measured success from audience reactions, white paper downloads and new leads generated with pharmaceutical and healthcare brands.

Achievements

The white paper has 400+ stakeholder downloads. Social media reach was over 2.2m. We spoke to thousands of HCPs across 8 international industry events who shared messages of compassion on social media post-event. 10% conversation rate across social media posts. 10 pharmaceutical brands approached us to collaborate on projects.