NHS staff are suffering from "extreme exhaustion"

NHS and social care staff burnout has reached an emergency'' level and poses a risk to the future of services, MPs have warned.

In a highly critical report, the Health and Social Care Committee called for immediate action to support exhausted staff who have worked throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but pointed to long-standing, unresolved issues even beforehand.

For example, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) told MPs that, prior to the onset of the pandemic, there were 50,000 nursing vacancies in the UK, while the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said a lack of staff is one of the biggest causes of workforce burnout in mental health services.

Tory MP and former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who is chairman of the committee, said:

"Workforce burnout across the NHS and care systems now presents an extraordinarily dangerous risk to the future functioning of both services. An absence of proper, detailed workforce planning has contributed to this, and was exposed by the pandemic with its many demands on staff. However, staff shortages existed long before Covid-19. Staff face unacceptable pressure with chronic excessive workload identified as a key driver of workforce burnout. It will simply not be possible to address the backlog caused by the pandemic unless these issues are addressed."

"Achieving a long-term solution demands a complete overhaul of workforce planning. Those plans should be guided by the need to ensure that the long-term supply of doctors, nurses and other clinicians is not constrained by short-term deficiencies in the number trained. Failure to address this will lead to not just more burnout but more expenditure on locum doctors and agency nurses.''

During the pandemic, the NHS Staff Survey found 44% of staff reported feeling unwell as a result of work-related stress in the previous 12 months. But even before the crisis, the NHS faced shortages of around "one in 10 or one in 12 staff'', the MPs' report added.

Meanwhile, in adult social care, MPs heard during their inquiry that the situation is "fragile''.

Skills For Care estimated that 7.3% of roles in adult social care had been vacant during the financial year 2019-20, equivalent to around 112,000 vacancies at any one time.