More working hours lost as pressure grows

NEARLY half-a-million working hours were lost to NHS Tayside last year because of staff absent on long-term sick leave.

Figures released by the cash-strapped health board under Freedom of Information legislation show 1,441 staff recorded sickness absences of more than 28 days during 2016.

In total, 492,551 working hours were lost because of these absences. More than half these staff — 821 — were nurses and midwives. Together they lost 290,241 working hours.

More than a third of the total absences — 144,584 hours — were due to anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illnesses.

Between 2011-12 and 2 0 1 5 - 1 6 , N H S Tay s i d e spending on bank nursing and midwifery staff rose from £565,000 to £5.54 million. It comes at a time when the board is being forced to make savings of £214m from its spending over the next five years. Nurses and midwives make up more than 40% of the NHS workforce in Scotland but a senior nursing union official said even more are needed to cope with the pressures on the health service.

Royal College of Nursing senior officer Bob McGlashan said: “Nurses are the largest staff group working on the frontline of the NHS, so it’s not surprising they have the highest number of staff with sickness absence.

“Pressures on them are huge — demand for health and care services is rocketing and the number of staff is just not keeping pace with the number of patients they’re expected to care for.

“This is frustrating and demoralising for nurses who are working flat out, yet still feeling unable to provide the care they would like to as there’s just not enough of them to cope with the ever-increasing demands on their time.”