NHS staff are working over a million hours a week of unpaid overtime to help the health service deal with an unprecedented demand for care, according to research by the Labour party.
Its estimate is based on an analysis of data in the NHS Staff Survey of the views and experiences of 497,000 health service personnel in England.
The most recent edition of the survey, published in February, found that many staff put in extra hours for no extra pay, and that some do as much as 11 hours a week unpaid overtime.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said staff working beyond their standard shift were paying the price for the NHS’s widespread workforce shortages.
“The NHS is in crisis after nearly a decade of Tory cuts and it’s a disgrace that its dedicated staff, who always put their patients first, are having to pick up the pieces to fill the gaps left by this crisis made in Downing Street,” Ashworth said.
The number of vacant posts in the NHS in England has risen in recent years, leaving hospitals, ambulance services and mental health services short of about 100,000 doctors, nurses and other staff.
“Boris Johnson’s Tories have let the NHS, its staff and our country badly down by intentionally slashing funding for staff training and scrapping the nursing bursary,” Ashworth added.
Applications to study nursing have fallen by 30% and the number of students starting relevant degree courses by 9% since then chancellor, George Osborne, scrapped the bursary for nurses, midwives and some other health professionals in 2016. NHS bosses privately regard that as a serious mistake.
Labour’s analysis highlights the staff survey’s finding that doctors and dentists work an average of 3.6 hours a week unpaid overtime. Nurses do about three hours and allied health professionals such as physiotherapists an average of 2.2 hours.
“With major staffing shortages across nursing and general practice the NHS is ever more reliant on the commitment of staff to go the extra mile. That commitment to patient care is a huge asset but it’s no substitute for having enough staff to meet demand”, said Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation thinktank.
“Ultimately nursing shortages are a policy choice not an inevitability. We need to train more staff and provide a better offer to the people currently in the NHS so that fewer leave.”
While the Conservatives have pledged to boost the NHS’s budget for its running costs by £20.5bn by 2023/24, they have not said how they will tackle NHS understaffing.
An interim version of the long-awaited NHS People Plan, unveiled in June, did not include measures to boost numbers that would involve spending more money or altering immigration rules.
However, Johnson last week unveiled plans to make it easier for overseas doctors and nurses to come to Britain and work in the NHS.
Dave Prentis, Unison’s general secretary, said: “Chronic understaffing has left us with a system propped up by the goodwill of devoted health workers. It’s no way to run a cherished national asset.”
