Raising the morale of NHS Scotland's embattled workforce could be key to securing its future - Joseph Anderson

Raising the morale of the NHS’ embattled workforce could be key to securing its future, writes The Scotsman’s health correspondent Joseph Anderson.

Healthcare professionals have long warned the mental health of the NHS Scotland workforce is at breaking point, leading to an exodus of vital workers.

NHS Scotland is in the grips of a recruitment and retention crisis, with workers of all healthcare professionals choosing to reduce hours, take early retirement or leave their chosen profession entirely amidst unbearable working conditions.

Mental health absences among healthcare staff are growing. Mental health absences among paramedics in the north-east of Scotland have spiralled by almost 420 per cent to a five-year high, while last year The Scotsman revealed that more than 75,000 NHS staff have taken absence with mental health issues in the past five years, with the number of absences doubling since 2018.

NHS Scotland is currently in the grips of a recruitment and retention crisis, with workers of all healthcare professionals choosing to reduce hours, take early retirement or leave their chosen profession entirely amidst unbearable working conditions.

Various Freedom of Information requests, sent to every health board in Scotland, show 74,013 NHS workers have missed shifts due to anxiety, stress, depression or other mental health related illnesses since 2018.

Prospective healthcare students can see all of this unfold, and are choosing different professions. The Scottish Government has struggled to recruit GPs, and the latest Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) figures show another drop in the number of applicants for nursing courses starting this autumn.

The figures show the number of applicants for nursing courses in Scotland is down 8.3 per cent compared to the same point last year, something the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has described as “an extremely worrying trend”.

Worryingly, those who do choose to take up healthcare as a career are struggling. Two-thirds of Scotland’s student nurses are considering quitting due to financial pressures, an RCN survey revealed in August.

Many of NHS Scotland’s issues – A&E chaos, spiralling waiting lists and delayed discharge – have been caused by staffing shortages among a workforce that endured the full horrors of the coronavirus pandemic, and were in turn rewarded with sub-inflationary pay offers by the Scottish and UK governments in recent years.

Raising the morale of the NHS’s embattled workforce could be key to securing its future.