Warning on hospital staffing pressures
HOSPITALS are at breaking point with as many as one in ten NHS staff off sick at some hospital Trusts, a leading doctor in Devon has claimed.
Speaking in a personal capacity in relation to his own trust, the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust, Dr David Strain, a hospital consultant and a Covid advisor to the British Medical Association, told the Sunday Mirror that the “staffing crisis” threatens to derail the NHS as it battles a huge spike in virus cases.
He added that the “wartime spirit” shown by medics working long shifts was “not sustainable”.
HOSPITALS are at breaking point with as many as one in ten NHS staff off sick at some hospital Trusts, a leading doctor in Devon has claimed.
The alert was sounded by Dr David Strain, a hospital consultant in Exeter who is also a Covid advisor to the British Medical Association, which represents over 150,000 workers.
The sickness figure includes staff self-isolating due to contact with those who tested positive for coronavirus outside work.
Speaking in a personal capacity in relation to his own Trust, the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust, Dr Strain told the Sunday Mirror that the “staffing crisis” threatens to derail the NHS as it battles a huge spike in virus cases.
NHS England bosses denied sickness rates were so high.
Hospital bed occupancy rates soaring past the safe level of 85% have prompted calls to reopen the pop-up Nightingale hospital sites.
However, Dr Strain claimed staffing shortages mean there are not enough nurses and doctors to man them.
Just one Nightingale site – the 116bed hospital facility in Exeter – is treating Covid patients, while a 750bed site in Manchester is open just for non-Covid patients.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine says 20,000 extra beds are needed as latest figures show 18,227 Covid patients were being treated in hospitals in England on Christmas Eve – just 700 shy of the April peak.
Meanwhile, NHS vacancies show a shortage of 50,000 nurses and more than 8,000 hospital doctors, with Government scientific advisers warning the daily death rate will soon hit 700 without another national lockdown and schools and universities closing.
Dr Strain, who was speaking of his own experience of working in the pandemic, said: “The NHS has been running on just about enough doctors and nurses for ten to 15 years. So with up to 10% of healthcare workers off sick, there are no longer enough.
“It is why we can’t open the Nightingale hospitals.”
He added that the “wartime spirit” shown by medics working 90-hour weeks in the first wave was “not sustainable”, and said burn-out is contributing to current sickness levels.
Official figures on Saturday
showed a further 161 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England have died – although the real number is likely to be higher due to reporting delays.
An NHS spokesman said the latest published figures on staff sickness were for August, when the rate was 3.95%.
She said that, because hospitals are split into Covid and non-Covid zones to protect patients, “some beds cannot be used”. She added: “Trying to compare current occupancy figures with those from before the pandemic is like comparing apples and pears. All of the Nightingales in England are ready to support resilience in the NHS.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Latest NHS data shows there are currently fewer staff absences than the first wave in April. Staff vacancies are falling, with 13,300 more nurses and 6,000 more doctors working in the NHS in the last year.”
The latest available staffing figures, released by NHS England for November 2 to December 2, showed there were 799 staff across Devon’s four main hospitals off, due to Covid-19.
As of December 2, the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital had 414 staff off due to Covid-19, Derriford with 145, Torbay with 127 and North Devon with 113. The Covid-19 absences do not include normal sickness, and those figures are provided additionally. The RD&E had the highest number of staff absences due to Covid-19, as well as the highest number of total staff absences, including general sickness.