NHS staff are taking more time off work because of illness, with the total now close to 17m days a year.
The upward trend has coincided with hospitals, GP surgeries, mental health care and ambulance services coming under intense pressure as patient demand for treatment has risen.
Health service personnel in England took a total of 16,866,471 sick days off work between them in 2016, according to a House of Commons written answer from the health minister Philip Dunne.
That is 895,979 more days than the 15,970,492 which the NHS lost in 2012 through staff illness – a 6% increase.
Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, and musculo-skeletal problems including chronic back pain, are the two main reasons NHS staff fall ill and have to take time off to recover.
The trend is likely to increase the NHS’s already large bill for staff sickness, which it estimated in 2015 cost it £2.4bn a year, or one pound for every £40 it spends.
“Losing so many days to illness, and especially to mental ill-health, is a real worry. Our NHS is at crisis point and we need to do much more to look after our staff,” said Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary.
Kim Sunley, a senior employment relations adviser at the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Nursing is a challenging job at the best of times but the current strain on the NHS is putting a huge amount of stress on individuals. Too many feel unsupported by their manager, overstretched and burning out.
“The sad consequence is an increase in stress-related illness, which is bad for the nurse and does not help the NHS to provide safe care to patients. They must look after their own mental health and be supported in doing so by their employer.”
The widespread shortages of nurses across the NHS and years of below-inflation pay rises have contributed significantly to stress on nurses, she added.
NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, has launched a major drive to improve staff health and wellbeing. In 2015 it allocated £5m to improve the quality of food in NHS premises, encourage staff to be more physically active, reduce stress and introduce health checks.
