A survey has revealed that the proportion of NHS England staff who reported feeling unwell as a result of work-related stress increased by nearly 10 per cent last year.
Carried out in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but before the most recent NHS announcements on pay, the NHS Staff Survey Results indicate that 44 per cent reported feeling unwell as a result of work-related stress in the previous 12 months, compared with 40.3 per cent in 2019.
The 2020 survey also found a slight reduction in respondents who said they often or always looked forward to going to work, and a bigger fall in those who said they were often or always enthusiastic about their job.
The survey also shows that the proportion of staff who said their employer provided equal opportunities fell compared with 2019, with a decrease among black and minority ethnic staff from 71.2 per cent to 69.2 per cent. This continues to reflect the concerns of the BAME community who have been heavily represented in the death toll of healthcare workers.
At least 230 NHS staff have died from Covid, according to an ITV tally last month, with many more affected. In January, at the height of the second wave of the pandemic, Labour said there were 52,000 NHS staff off with the virus.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “The overall picture is encouraging given the unprecedented and most challenging of times NHS staff have worked through over the past twelve months. There are though significant areas of concern and the recent data on the continued poorer experience of ethnic minority staff starkly reminds NHS leaders that staff experience varies unacceptably in their organisations.
“With the government once again reiterating its intention to offer only a one per cent pay rise there can be no room for complacency when the results also show that around a third of staff are considering leaving their jobs and nearly one in five are thinking of quitting the health service entirely. While there has been an increase in the number of staff agreeing that their organisation has enough staff for them to do their job properly, this is still less than two in five, and reinforces the need for a funded workforce plan to give staff hope that the vacancies in their teams will be filled longer term.
“After an exceptional and extreme year, we must all be mindful of the need to allow NHS staff the time and space they need to decompress, particularly as experts continue to warn that we could face another Covid-19 wave again in the coming months. We need an honest conversation which acknowledges that the full resumption of health service activity in the short term must be carefully paced to protect the health of our people.”
