Underpaid, short-staffed and sick with stress – staff at Huddersfield and Halifax hospitals are increasingly feeling the strain.
And according to the latest NHS Staff Survey results, one in eight members of staff at the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust (12.6%) said they rarely or never look forward to going to work, the same as in 2016.
Bodies representing NHS staff have said the latest survey should act as a warning to the Government that staff are working under “impossible conditions” and that their goodwill and dedication could not be “a replacement for adequate funding and proper workforce planning.”
When asked if there was enough staff at the Trust for them to do their job properly, 51.7% of staff at Calderdale and Huddersfield disagreed, up from 50.5% in 2016.
Two-fifths of staff (42.3%) said they had felt unwell due to work-related stress in 2017, although this was down slightly from 37.3% in 2016.
One of the biggest increases found in the survey compared to last year was in dissatisfaction with levels of pay, rising from 37.1% saying they were dissatisfied or strongly dissatisfied in 2016 to 43.2% in 2017.
NHS staff in England have been offered a pay deal which would end the 1% pay cap they have experienced in recent years. The deal would see around half of staff getting an increase of 6.5% over three years, with bigger increases of up to 29% for some groups within the NHS.
At the trust, one in six members of staff said they were not able to deliver the care they aspired to (15.7%), up from 12.4% in 2016.
Approximately 1.1million NHS employees in England were invited to participate in the survey between September 2017 and November 2017.
The results show that for staff at acute Trusts, one in nine (11.2%) rarely or never look forward to going to work, up from 10.8% in 2016, while 46.9% said there was not enough staff in their organisation for them to do their job properly, up from 46.2%.
One in eight staff said they were unable to deliver the care they aspire to (13.1%), up from 12.1% in 2016.
The proportion saying they have felt unwell due to work related stress has grown from 35.2% in 2016 to 36.8% in 2017.
Responding to the NHS survey, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association Council, said: “These new figures reflect the reality faced by doctors who are working under impossible conditions with widespread staff shortages, a lack of capacity in their workplaces and a chronically underfunded NHS.”
