The Workers Union is calling for a cash boost for the NHS.
The announcement came after the House of Commons Social Care Committee released its ‘Workforce burnout and resilience in the NHS and social care’ report.
The report argues that burnout in our health service is a ‘widespread reality’ and staff are exhausted because of continuing recruitment problems.
The roots of the report go back to July 2020, when the Health and Social Care Committee launched an inquiry into staff burnout in the NHS. The group was chaired by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt and made up of MPs from across the political spectrum.
Its conclusions, published last Tuesday, point to ‘workforce planning’ as one of the main issues facing the NHS. It said that the way that the organisation tackles its recruitment plans must be completely revamped, so that a clearer picture of how many workers its needs in the short, medium and long term is readily available.
The report also said that it is ‘clear that workforce planning has been led by the funding envelope available to health and social care rather than by demand and the capacity required to service that demand.’
The Workers Union says
A spokesperson for The Workers Union said: ‘Without the NHS during peak COVID, our country would have plunged into chaos. The fact that we were able to call on its brilliant workforce is a reflection of the enduring power and value of this amazing institution. Its people are its life force and they showed how much they care by exposing themselves to risk, time and time again. For this they deserve our eternal thanks and support; but they also need some guarantees that go beyond fine words and handclaps.
‘This government has done much to promote the health service as the one of the crowning achievements of British health and social care policy. With the vaccine roll-out a success and the country returning to normal, now is the optimum time to continue that legacy by sorting out the NHS’s recruitment bottle necks and investing in primary and secondary care services.’
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