WORK FORCE I S SUE S
Overhaul needed to tackle workforce burnout
A Committee of MPs has warned that workforce burnout presents an “extraordinarily dangerous risk” to the functioning of health and social care. The findings of the report, which are summarised in this article, reveal the situation has reached “emergency levels”.
In a highly critical report, the Health and Social Care Committee found that workforce burnout across the NHS and social care has reached an emergency level, posing a risk to the future functioning of both services. Although COVID-19 had a huge impact on workforce pressures, staff shortages across the NHS and social care were reported to be a significant problem prior to the pandemic and these shortages were identified as the biggest driver of workforce burnout. The committee of MPs concluded that a total overhaul of workforce planning was required. The inquiry into workforce burnout and resilience looked at: l How resilient the NHS and social care workforce was under pre-COVID-19 operating conditions.
l What the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been on resilience, levels of workforce stress, and burnout across the NHS and social care sectors.
l What the current scale of workforce burnout is across NHS and social care.
l How resilience could be strengthened in the future.
The Committee received over 100 written submissions and held four oral evidence sessions, including anonymous in-depth interviews with frontline staff.
What do we mean by ‘staff burnout’? Professor Michael West of the King’s Fund provided the following definition of burnout in an oral evidence session to the Committee: “Very simply, stress and burnout at work are when the demands on us exceed the resources that we have; the level of work demands is very high and the resources we have to respond are not sometimes adequate, whether to do with our own personal resources, such as lack of skills, lack of training, lack of equipment, or the resources in our teams or organisations such as staff shortages, lack of PPE equipment, inadequate technologies or, more broadly, lack of the training and skills needed.” He added that the term was often used to describe a constellation of three factors; “emotional exhaustion”; “a sense of what is sometimes called depersonalisation: cynicism or detachment” and a “lack of personal
accomplishment – that they are not really making a difference”. In relation to the NHS, Professor West
concluded that burnout could also be described as “moral distress”, where the individual concerned believes that “I am not providing the quality of care that I should be providing for the people I am offering services for.” The King’s Fund’s written submission stated that NHS staff were 50% more likely to experience high levels of work-related stress compared with the general working population. This was likely to damage their health and affect care quality, and was associated with patient satisfaction, financial performance, absenteeism and organisational performance. Poor staff health and wellbeing was also linked with turnover and intention to quit, along with higher levels of patient mortality in the acute sector. The RCN’s written evidence cited a meta-analysis of 21 studies which concluded that burnout was linked to a decline in patient safety and outcomes, and an increase in patient dissatisfaction and complaints.
AUGUST 2021
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