Psychologically informed leadership coaching positively impacts the mental well-being of 80 senior doctors, medical and public health leaders.

Introduction: Senior doctors, medical and public health leaders frequently experience poor levels of mental well-being. The aim was to investigate whether psychologically informed leadership coaching impacted on the mental well-being of 80 UK-based senior doctors, medical and public health leaders.

Methods: A pre-post study was undertaken during 2018-2022 of 80 UK senior doctors, medical and public health leaders. Before and after measures of mental well-being were measured using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. The age range was 30-63 years (mean 44.5, mode and median, 45.0). Thirty-seven participants were male (46.3%). The proportion of non-white ethnicity was 21.3%.Participants undertook an average of 8.7 hours of bespoke 1:1 psychologically informed leadership coaching.

Results: The mean well-being score before the intervention was 21.4 (SD=3.28). The mean well-being score after the intervention increased to 24.5 (SD=3.38). A paired samples t-test found that the increase in metric well-being scores after the intervention was statistically significant (t=-9.52, p<0.001; Cohen's d=3.14).The mean improvement was+17.4% (median 115.8%, mode 100, range -17.7% to+202.4%). This was observed particularly in two subdomains.

Conclusion: Psychologically informed leadership coaching may be an effective way to improve mental well-being outcomes in senior doctors, medical and public heath leaders. The contribution of psychologically informed coaching is currently limited in medical leadership development research.