STAFF WELFARE Acute medicine
Staff retention and recruitment are also being impacted by workplace morale, issues around working conditions and increased pressures, as well as dissatisfaction around pay and funding for training. A survey reported by the Society for Acute Medicine10 has painted a worrying picture: l Nearly 94% of respondents said their units faced regular problems providing a full quota of medical staff for their units and 85% reported permanent medical staff work extra shifts to maintain staffing levels, while 91% said their units employed locum trainees and 60% locum consultants.
l More than two-thirds (70%) said their acute medical units do not have a full quota of permanent nursing staff, 67% had experience of patients being moved from their units without being seen by a consultant and 64% recorded consultants being asked to work overnight because of staff shortages.
“There is an NHS-wide workforce crisis and everyone acknowledges the desperate need for change,” commented Dr Mark Holland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine. “An immediate objective must be to improve the working environment for our staff to enhance recruitment and maintain retention. We need to make substantive posts as attractive as locum positions, a move which would enhance our service and save money. “Removing the pay cap on NHS staff,
particularly the lowest paid, is long overdue, while the extra pressure on overworked frontline staff to meet targets must be eased. This data shows it is high time we saw steps taken to stop disincentivising staff – salaries must be fair, working conditions must be safe and sustainable and clear career pathways must be in place,” he continued.
BMA: Unsustainable workloads
The British Medical Association (BMA) has also warned that patient care and staff morale are being jeopardised by overstretched services, as the latest figures showed thousands of unfilled NHS posts.11 Figures published by NHS digital show that there were more than 86,000 vacancies for full-time equivalent NHS posts between January and March this year. The total number of vacancies is almost 8,000 posts higher than the same period last year. BMA treasurer Andrew Dearden said
that the level of vacant roles were a stark reminder of the challenges faced by the health service when it came to recruiting and retaining staff. He added that shortfalls in the NHS workforce would inevitably be felt by the patients who relied upon it and the overstretched staff having to work beyond their capacity. He said: “Across many parts of the NHS, recruitment and retention problems are leaving staff and services thinly stretched and affecting patients’ access to care. Doctors are telling us they are struggling with unsustainable workloads to try to fill the gaps. This has a huge impact on morale, often leading to stress and burnout. If we cannot find a solution, it is inevitable that these doctors may consider looking elsewhere for a job that provides them with greater career satisfaction and a better work-life balance. “These issues need to be urgently addressed to ensure the NHS can continue to attract and retain frontline staff and to ensure that it has the necessary resources to meet rising demand on services. Failure to do so will only compound existing recruitment problems, adding to pressure on existing
There are significant costs to the NHS when Trusts fail to ‘put staff health and wellbeing at the heart of their work’. NHS Employers estimate that 30% of NHS sick leave is caused by stress, costing up to £400 million a year in lost productivity.
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staff and affect access to, and quality of, patient care.”
The figures show that there are significant challenges ahead: l The number of vacant medical and dental posts between January and March this year stood at 11,154 compared to 9,369 during the same period in 2016.
l Vacancies among nursing and midwifery posts also increased from 29,250 during the first quarter of 2016 to 32,929 during the first three months of this year.
l Among GPs in England there were a total of 2,013 vacancies between April 2015 and March 2016, more than half of which remained unfilled.
General practice
Earlier this year, a study carried out by the University of Exeter also found that two-out- of-five GPs in south-west England intend to quit medicine in the next five years.12
The
survey of more than 2,000 GPs in the region found that 40% were planning to leave the profession in the next five years, while 70% are looking at changing their working patterns. The study also found that 54% of GPs
reported having low morale with those falling into this group the most likely to profess an intention to leave medicine. BMA education, training and workforce GP lead Krishna Kasaraneni, said: “This study from Exeter University demonstrates once again the enormous crisis facing general practice as it struggles to cope with rising patient demand, stagnating budgets and widespread staff shortages. As government figures show, the number
SEPTEMBER 2017
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