Labour are asking too much of overworked NHS staff (2024)

‘I drove into work and suddenly realised I was crying. I got into the work car park and literally couldn’t get out of the car.’

‘I held myself together and just cracked on and was functioning quite normally until 11am, by which time I had been non-stop for three hours. We were short-staffed, work was piling up and I looked at the workload on the screen and just snapped.’

This is Dr Sarah Jacques, who was working as an NHS GP when her burnout took a turn for the worse in 2022. She left work, drove to the Sussex coast and spent hours contemplating suicide.

‘I was still in my scrubs,’ she told me. ‘I sat there crying my eyes out, trying to decide whether I should walk into the sea or not.’

Two years on, Sarah has left general practice, her mental health has recovered and she speaks openly about the current epidemic of burnout, breakdowns and suicides among medics.

She’s not alone. The charity Doctors in Distress reports that one doctor takes their own life every three weeks. The mental health service for health professionals – NHS Practitioner health registered 6,741 new patients in 2022/23.

NHS staff had reached an ‘emergency’ level of burnout on the back of the pandemic in 2021. Three years on, things feel even worse.

So what is the Labour Party pledging to do about it? While the NHS workforce crumbles under the current pressures, Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting announced Labour’s plans this week to cut NHS waiting lists by asking NHS staff to deliver ‘40,000 more appointments a week through evening and weekend clinics’.

Labour are reportedly hoping that paying overtime rates for the extra out-of-hours shifts will incentivise staff.

Really? We know that the most valuable resource our health service has is its staff, yet due to years of disinvestment, poor workforce planning, rock bottom staff wellbeing and plummeting retention – we have a chronic workforce crisis.

In March 2024, there were the equivalent of 1,790 fewer fully qualified full-time GPs than there were in September 2015. In secondary care – as of December 2023 – there were 110,781 unfilled posts, which in itself piles the pressure on existing staff who are already doing their level best to stay afloat.

With 7.54 million people now on waiting lists for treatment (3.23 million who have been waiting over 18 weeks), and GPs delivering over 1.49 million appointments on average per day: NHS staff are already working to exhaustion.

They are already doing the work of at least two people, covering unstaffed rotas, missing their weddings and time with their children. But let’s ask them to work more shall we?

It seems our politicians are oblivious to the current experience of staff on the ground. While tackling waiting lists is a worthy goal – the idealism of these political promises may appeal to some voters, but these sound bites are not grounded in reality.

Streeting’s plan to deliver 40,000 more appointments every week using extra evening and weekend clinics doesn’t specify where he is going to find all the extra staff to do this overtime.

Has he forgotten about the thousands of staff considering moving overseas for a better work-life balance? Or the many more taking early retirement as they’ve just had enough? The staff who have burnt out and left. The staff that have taken their lives?

Those that remain are grappling to hold up underfilled rotas. Night shifts are the most gruelling to work, and often the most isolated – when the rest of the hospital closes down leaving a skeleton team to deal with emergencies.

Are Labour planning on keeping everyone back late to sort out the backlog? The radiographers and lab staff? The secretaries doing the essential comms? The cleaners and caterers and porters… and will they all be paid overtime rates?

Streeting says he won’t force staff to work these extra shifts, but even if funding is made available to pay those staff who feel they are able to work more, where is he planning on finding all the extra intensive care beds for these patients?

The private sector apparently. That’s a whole article in itself. This is an unrealistic plan and it is not the magic cure for bringing down waiting lists.

So what is going to work? Britons currently have the worst access to healthcare in Europe. In 2010, we had one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

Our politicians might benefit from remembering that NHS staff are also patients and voters. The NHS in England alone employs 1.5 million people, making it the largest employer in England. That is a lot of votes.

There are also a lot of skilled, knowledgeable professionals who have so much to offer our health service.

Asking them to simply work harder, rather than recognising how difficult it already is to work within the NHS right now is not going to win an election, or solve this crisis.

Invest in the staff – pay them better, improve working conditions, eradicate box-ticking soul-crushing bureaucracy which takes time away from the actual job.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk.

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