The report by the Medical Protection Society (MPS), the protection organisation supporting more than 300,000 healthcare professionals, engaged with 61 doctors who have faced an NHS trust disciplinary as part of its report.

The research reveals 80% said the disciplinary had a detrimental impact on their mental health and 44% experienced suicidal thoughts during the process.

In addition, 75% of the doctors who took part said the length of the disciplinary affected their mental health most, with many lasting years. During this time some were excluded from duties and lost their clinical skills. Others were impacted by the severe tone in trust communications, the lack of compassion and support from the trust, and the unwillingness to consider an informal approach before initiating a formal disciplinary.

Other key finding in the report include:

• 60% said they were not informed of the allegations in good time before the process began.
• After the investigation concluded, 51% they were fearful about raising patient safety concerns in the future, 48% had lost confidence in their clinical skills, 88% felt angry and frustrated about how they were treated.
• 91% said a dedicated person to support those facing a disciplinary could help improve the process.
• 70% said trust boards should be required to share data on disciplinary outcomes.

An MPS Freedom of Information request to NHS trusts in England, to which 86 trusts responded, also revealed that 35% do not mandate training for staff handling disciplinaries, and 23% do not regularly submit data on disciplinaries to trust boards for scrutiny.

MPS said trusts could help to avoid potentially devastating consequences for doctors facing disciplinaries, by adhering to the Maintaining High Professional Standards framework established to guide trusts through the process. It also called for better training for staff, and more transparency around the way trusts use and conduct disciplinaries.

Dr Rob Hendry, medical director at MPS, said: 'There has been limited transparency or scrutiny into how NHS trusts initiate and conduct disciplinaries against doctors, particularly in contrast to the attention on the GMC investigation process. This must change.

'All trust boards should have oversight of trust processes, and NHS England should require all trusts to provide standardised data on use of disciplinaries. This should be published and scrutinised to identify trends and outliers.'

Dr Naru Narayanan, president of hospital doctors' union HCSA, added: 'The process routinely takes many months or even years. It can have a huge impact on doctors' mental and physical health, and destroy careers.

'They are also all too often used to silence or exert control. The fact that over half of doctors polled believed that their raising patient safety concerns was a factor in their investigation should shock but it sadly comes as no surprise. We need urgent reform to ensure efficient, independent and properly scrutinised disciplinary processes, free of bias and discrimination. NHS staff deserve no less.'