Doctors and nurses have said they feel “brutalized” and exhausted, amid a mounting mental health crisis that has seen hospital staff take more than 8 million sick days in the last five years. .
Senior officials called for an urgent plan to plug staff shortages after data seen by the Observer revealed that mental health-related sick leave had risen every year since 2017, rising during the pandemic.
MPs warned staff were at a “breaking point” and there was no clear plan to ease the pressure on them. Some doctors have warned of the lasting impact on their colleagues of having to deal with the pandemic.
Intense pressure on staff will continue after it emerged last week that the number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment had dropped. climbed to the highest level since records began 15 years ago.
Data from 67 NHS hospital trusts, published under the Freedom of Information Actfound that there had been the equivalent of 22,718 years of mental health sick days since 2017.
Last year saw more than 2.2 million days, as staff continued to battle the pandemic, in addition to huge treatment backlogs and overwhelmed A&E departments. It is estimated that there 110,000 vacancies across the NHSwith trusted leaders repeatedly warning that there are no robust plans to ensure the shortage is filled.
Dr. Thomas Dolphin, a consultant anesthesiologist, said mental stresses were more acute at the start of the pandemic. when staff struggled with limited PPE. However, he said the crisis exposed serious underlying problems. “There was the relentlessness of the banal horror of it: having to watch people die in such horrible circumstances, without being able to see their loved ones,” she said. “To be fair to the hospitals, there was a huge focus on the well-being of the staff. But it wasn’t enough, because this exposed the staffing shortage in the NHS that has been going on for a long, long time.
“We brutally killed our staff for months. Then, as expected, many of them left or retired, or moved to another country as soon as they could because it destroyed their souls. Now we are in a position where we have even fewer staff. The consequence is in those [mental health absence] numbers.”
He said allowing more staff to work reduced hours could help.
Stephen Jones, professional leader in mental health at the Royal College of Nursing, said many nurses felt guilty for not being able to do more for patients. “Many are about to leave our profession forever,” she said. “We want employers to work with us to make sure staff rest, have breaks and take care of themselves so they can better care for patients.”
Miriam Deakin, Director of Policy and Strategy at National Health Service The providers, who represent hospital trusts, said there remained an “enormous strain on people throughout the health and care system”. She added: “Only 27% of people who work in the NHS feel that there are enough staff in their organization to enable them to do their jobs properly. More than half of ambulance workers said they felt unwell due to work-related stress in the past year.
“Increasing demand and persistent labor shortages are leaving staff with unsustainably high workloads. As much as trusted leaders work to ensure the well-being of their people, supporting personal resilience while operating within these constraints can only go so far.”
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokeswoman, who submitted the data requests, said a number of improvements were needed to help staff, including addressing the underlying problem of an overburdened workforce.
“These staggering figures show that the NHS is facing a tidal wave of mental health-related absences,” he said. “This should be a wake up call to this Conservative government that they can no longer turn a blind eye to this crisis. Sajid Javid needs to come up with a clear plan to support NHS staff, starting with addressing chronic staff shortages and reducing unsustainable workloads.”
Data released by hospitals suggested that mental health problems were widespread across the service, with the largest trusts reporting the most days lost.
The University of Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest in England with 10 hospitals, recorded 591,254 working days lost to mental illness in the last five years.
Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, two other large trusts, recorded 555,798 and 401,417 sick days respectively. All three trusts said they had comprehensive mental health support for staff.
A spokesman for the University of Manchester NHS foundation said the support included a comprehensive health and wellness service for employees, a dedicated 24/7 employee assistance programme, online resources and mental health first aid
Nicky Clarke, chief of staff at the Northern Care Alliance NHS foundation trust, said staff had shown “remarkable resilience” during the pandemic, with a new wellness program launched in 2020.
Jenny Lewis, from the Leeds NHS Trust teaching hospitals, said not all mental health leave was work-related and reiterated that the big trusts had higher absence figures, adding: “We have worked a lot with staff to remove the stigma associated with mental health so that we can better support our people.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We know the NHS has been under unprecedented pressure, and supporting the mental health and wellbeing of NHS staff is a priority.
“We have invested £37m this year to fund 40 staff mental health centers across the country that are alongside a dedicated helpline and 24/7 text support services. We have a record number of staff, including more than 4,200 more doctors and more than 12,100 more nurses compared to January 2021.”
