Overworked NHS Staff Costs More Than £1 Billion A Year For Sick Days

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With the ongoing NHS crisis, staff working in the health sector in England are more overworked than ever. A new research study commissioned by totaljobs showed that the total number of sick days from overworked staff diminished the NHS budget further for sick pay.

Daily Mail reported that demands of NHS in addition to inadequate funding results to "unprecedented levels of stress and burnout" among staff, according to Dr. Judith Johnson, a clinical psychologist from the University of Leeds. Dr. Johnson adds that poor wellbeing of healthcare workers is also linked to poorer quality of patient care.

Researchers used publicly accessible figures from the NHS website to come up with the figures they cited. They found that qualified ambulance staff had the highest number of sick days, costing the NHS £28M. Second to them were healthcare assistants, which cost the NHS £319M. The most expensive burden of sick pays was in the health visiting, nursing and midwifery sector at £442M. Sick pay to admin staff also cost the NHS at £198M and another £45M for those in the therapeutic, technical and scientific sector. But the total cost might be even higher than £1.1B as doctors were not included in the study.

The crisis in NHS is not only restricted to patients, but also to healthcare workers. Being pressured to work for long hours in an environment that compromises patient care leads to poor morale and retention among NHS staff, according to Dr. Zara Aziz as per The Guardian. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth acknowledged that tired and overworked staff cannot be expected to continue to provide the quality of patient care, as per The Independent.

Danny Mortimer, the chief executive of NHS Employers responded to the study by saying that NHS staff have specialist support for their health. However, the growing demands to the NHS affects the employees and they are urgently finding solutions to sustain the fitness of the staff and reduce absences. Find out more about the government's response to the NHS crisis here: