Average NHS nurse took entire week off sick last year due to stress
Every single nurse in the NHS in England took the equivalent of a week off work last year due to stress, anxiety and depression, new union analysis has shown.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned that pressures inside the NHS have become so severe, that every one of the health service’s 350,000 nurses took a week off in 2023 due to stress related illness.
“Dangerous stress levels have become normalised inside an NHS which is unable to cope with demand”
Pat Cullen
NHS England’s latest sickness absence data showed that, across 2023, nearly seven million days (6.88m) were lost to illness from nurses and health visitors working in the NHS.
The data showed that, for nursing staff, stress-related illnesses accounted for nearly a quarter (24%) of the days lost to sickness.
This figure was more than double the prevalence of any other kind of illness, with cold or flu being the second most common at 12%.
RCN analysis found that stress-related days of sickness were so high that it was equivalent to every single nurse in the NHS taking an entire week off work last year because of stress, anxiety or depression.
The college warned that chronic workforce shortages in the health service were putting so much pressure on staff that it was causing them to become unwell.
It comes as there are over 34,000 registered nurse vacancies in the NHS in England.
Commenting on the findings, RCN general secretary and chief executive, Professor Pat Cullen, said: “Dangerous stress levels have become normalised inside an NHS which is unable to cope with demand.
“Chronic workforce shortages are putting nurses under unbearable pressure, unable to deliver the high-quality care they were trained to,” she said.
Pat Cullen
“To make matters worse, low pay means they can’t make ends meet when they go home – it is no way to treat our safety-critical profession.”
Ms Cullen warned that nursing staff in the NHS were “running on empty”.
She called on NHS leaders and the government to “stop normalising poor mental health” among staff and to bring forward an action plan to tackle the dangerous levels of stress and anxiety.
Meanwhile, the RCN has also urged the health and safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, to ensure employers were meeting their legal duties to assess and mitigate the risks from work-related stress.
The RCN analysis comes just days after the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced controversial plans to review the way people are signed off work with long-term health conditions.
In a speech, Mr Sunak criticised what he called a “sick note culture” and suggested that general practices should no longer be able to issue fit notes.
The move was widely criticised by healthcare organisations and unions, including the RCN.
Ms Cullen said: “Rather than blaming ‘sicknote culture’, the prime minister should be trying to make the lives of nursing staff easier, starting with significant investment in services and the nursing profession.”
The Department of Health and Social Care and the Health and Safety Executive were contacted for comment.
