Staff will quit if not given ‘time to recover’, says NHSE director

An NHS England director and trust chief says he ‘fears [the NHS] will see increasing numbers of resignations’ unless more is done to ensure burnt-out staff are given sufficient leave to recover mentally and physically.

Matthew Winn, NHSE’s director of community health and Cambridgeshire Community Services Trust chief executive, set out his concerns in a paper for discussion at his trust’s board meeting today.

While the service is grappling to keep tabs on the number of staff it is losing because of compulsory vaccination plans, the issue of staff leaving because of burnout is harder to quantify, but a huge concern to NHS leaders. Nearly two years of tackling coronavirus has taken a huge emotional and physical toll on a large proportion of the workforce and burnout was a growing issue even before the pandemic.

Mr Winn’s paper says: “As the NHS starts to focus on recovering from the current covid pressures, it is vital that the national, regional and local planning must take into consideration that our staff need time to recover and that they cannot (for example) be expected to catch up on the waiting lists that have accrued, without time and resources to support them.

“In the absence of such an approach, I fear that we will see increasing numbers of resignations and the care we will be able to provide will be far short of the standards we set ourselves and that the public expects from us.”

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Source: HSJ, 26 January 2022