NHS staff hit by ‘burnout’, admits Health Secretary
DOCTORS and nurses are suffering from ‘burnout and stress’ amid a continuing recruitment crisis in the NHS, the Health Secretary admitted yesterday. Jeane Freeman pledged to review the support available to NHS staff following concerns about ‘long-term sickness’ and low morale.
She said any inquiry would examine complaints about an alleged culture of ‘bullying and harassment’ at health boards across the country.
Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs called on the Scottish Government to do more to protect the health and welfare of NHS staff.
Proposals included providing sleeping facilities, weight management sessions, blood pressure checks and general health monitoring.
The Mail reported on Tuesday that health chiefs are being urged to offer ‘sleep pods’ to hospital medics on long shifts. In 2011, junior doctor Lauren Connelly, 23, was killed in a road crash following a night shift.
Leading a debate in Holyrood yesterday, Mr Briggs argued that sleep pods would allow tired staff to rest before getting behind the wheel.
He said: ‘Lauren was killed after her car veered off the M8 as she drove home from a 12hour night shift at Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock [Renfrewshire]. Dr Connelly, from East Kilbride [Lanarkshire], had been seven weeks into her medical training.
‘It tragically highlighted the fears over long working hours and fatigue faced by so many who work in our NHS, with staff often working exhausting 100-hour weeks and shift patterns of 12 consecutive days.’
He added: ‘People working in our NHS are superheroes in many people’s eyes but they are not superhuman.’
Mr Briggs, MSP for Lothian, stressed the ‘need to understand the severe pressures NHS staff are under and how this negatively impacts on their health and wellbeing’.
His calls were backed by opposition MPS, with Labour
‘They are not superhuman’
health spokesman Monica Lennon saying her party would ‘always support our health and social care staff to get the working conditions they deserve’.
She added that any review by ministers must ‘address the underlying issues that contribute to burnout, stress, long-term sickness and to staff leaving health and social care, such as staff shortage, workplace culture, bullying and harassment and poor work-life balance’.
LibDem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘Although sometimes we attack Government policy and sometimes the governance of our health boards, we never attack the work of our frontline staff – they are heroes of our country. There just aren’t enough of them, there is a workforce crisis.’
Miss Freeman admitted that medics are suffering from ‘burn-out’ and ‘stress’ and said she would be ‘happy’ to order a review of the support available to them.
She added that the NHS workforce was at a record high but Brexit posed a ‘threat’ to this.
However, Mr Briggs said: ‘SNP ministers have presided over a workforce crisis which is impacting on the wellbeing of NHS staff today.’
Meanwhile, figures show 541 GPs and 221 dentists retired early in the past three years. Of those who started drawing their pension between 2015-16 and 2017-18, only 40 were at state pension age.
The data was obtained from the Scottish Government under a freedom of information request by the Lib Dems.
Mr Cole-Hamilton said: ‘Many doctors are exhausted and disenchanted.
‘The Scottish Government has mucked up NHS workforce planning, while years of disinvestment have piled the pressure on primary care.’