Healthcare workers are “absolutely shattered” and unless something is done to address the crisis in morale, staffing and training then “they won’t be there when you need them”, one of the world’s leading scientists has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Jeremy Farrar, the director of Wellcome and soon to be chief scientist of the World Health Organization, warned that healthcare workers would not be ready should another crisis hit.
“This is a global issue, which I think is hugely concerning. It’s certainly true in this country,” he said. “The resilience of healthcare workers, broadly defined from ambulance drivers to nurses to doctors, to care workers in social care, etc. They’re shattered. They are absolutely shattered.”
Farrar’s comments come as thousands of ambulance workers in the GMB and Unite unions go on strike on Monday in their dispute over pay and staffing, and the British Medical Association accused the government of reckless behaviour ahead of a strike ballot result by junior doctors.
Prof Philip Banfield, the BMA’s chair of council, said Rishi Sunak and the health secretary, Steve Barclay, were “standing on the precipice of an historic mistake”.
Junior doctors are the latest NHS staff to ballot for industrial action, with nurses, ambulance staff, physiotherapists and midwives among those who have already gone on strike. Further strikes next month have been announced by the Royal College of Nursing and ambulance workers represented by Unite and GMB.
Farrar said: “I think we have to address the morale, staffing, the training, everything from public health physicians to care workers, to doctors and nurses and physios and everybody in between because there’s very little spare capacity in any system globally. It’s particularly true in the UK. As you can see from the strikes, morale and resilience is very thin.”
Farrar also raised concerns about what should happen if another crisis struck.
“If you stretch people beyond their resilience they won’t be there when you need them,” he said.
Farrar said that coping in an epidemic wears health workers down as the months and years go by and that “people are leaving those professions”.
“Just to go back to delivering non-pandemic health care is going to be a huge challenge,” he said.
A ballot of junior doctors held by the HCSA has already returned an unprecedented 97% “yes” vote for a strike by members, on 75% turnout of the 531 members eligible to vote. The union has announced the strike will be held on Wednesday 15 March.
The HCSA president, Dr Naru Narayanan, criticised the pay and workloads for junior doctors – qualified doctors who are in clinical training with up to eight years’ experience as a hospital doctor or up to three years’ experience in general practice.
“Junior doctors have held together patient care amid a spiralling staffing crisis. In return for this huge emotional, mental and physical toll they’ve been subjected to a decade of real-terms pay cuts totalling over 26%. Enough is enough,” he said.
Narayanan said junior doctors would not “be taken for granted” any more, adding that they were taking decisive action for their patients and for their own wellbeing.
“Falling pay, increasing workloads and dangerous levels of understaffing have driven carers across the NHS to strike. The blame for this lies solely with a complacent government, seemingly content to let patient care suffer,” he said.
“The ball is firmly in the government’s court. It must act now to negotiate a proper pay increase – part of a wider funding package for the NHS.”
Narayanan added junior doctors had reported that without change they would seek alternative employment, possibly overseas.
On Sunday, Banfield said the government’s refusal to enter meaningful negotiations with trade unions on strikes by healthcare staff was guaranteeing escalation.
“Doctors have never experienced so much stress, so much moral injury from not being able to undertake the care that they’re so desperate to give,” he said. “This government, with its silence and disregard for our highly skilled and expert workforce, is consciously and deliberately overseeing the demise of the NHS at a point when it is needed most.”
He accused the government of “letting patients down”, adding: “All NHS staff are standing up for our patients in a system that seems to have forgotten that valuing staff and their wellbeing is directly linked to patient safety and better outcomes of care.”
Meanwhile, striking nurses will be paid 60% more by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) than during previous strikes. The union is increasing the day rate for those on the picket line from £50 to £80.
Nurses who have already gone on strike for four days will get £120 a day as the RCN dips into a £50m fighting fund before an unprecedented full 48-hour strike on 1 March.
The RCN said the move was aimed at shoring up nurses’ resolve and to undermine the government’s strategy to “wait out the strikes rather than negotiate”.
Public support for striking nurses remained the highest of any striking workforce, said the RCN.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We hugely value the work of junior doctors and we have been clear that supporting and retaining the NHS workforce is one of our main priorities.
“As part of a multi-year deal we agreed with the BMA, junior doctors’ pay has increased by a cumulative 8.2% since 2019-20. We also introduced a higher pay band for the most experienced staff and increased rates for night shifts.
“The health and social care secretary has met with the BMA and other medical unions to discuss pay, conditions and workload. He’s been clear he wants to continue discussing how we can make the NHS a better place to work for all.”
