NHS staff ‘petrified’ of how bad winter will be at hospitals in England

As reported by The Guardian, doctors and nurses fear they will be unable to cope with flu, Covid and cost of living crisis, bosses say

Doctors and nurses fear services will not be able to cope with a combination of flu, resurgent COVID, winter and the cost of living crisis damaging people’s health, and also the wave of looming strikes over pay.

Nurses at most hospitals and other NHS services across the UK are due to strike next month. Another trust boss said that while they could cope with a stoppage by nurses, a strike by members of Unison – the result of its ballot of staff is due next week – could make it impossible to keep services running at anywhere near normal levels.

Six out of seven (86%) hospital bosses are worried they will not be able to meet the intense demand for care they are set to face over the next year, given growing pressures.

Similarly, 85% are more worried about this winter than any previous one, according to a survey of 183 senior figures at 121 trusts in England undertaken by the hospital group NHS Providers.

Large majorities are also concerned about a lack of staff (77%), workers at their trust suffering burnout (93%), and lack of investment in social care (94%).

The NHS has been challenged over how it is using its record £152.6bn budget after new research showed it is treating fewer patients in the 7.1m backlog than expected.

“NHS spending in England is, in real terms, 12% above its 2019 level. Yet it is getting fewer people off waiting lists and into hospital treatment than it was managing back in 2019.

“That’s one reason why waiting lists have risen to levels 60%, or 2.6m, above where they were prior to the pandemic,” said Ben Zaranko, a research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The NHS’s struggle to increase the number of planned operations it carries out means the waiting list will peak at about 8m and will not start falling until late 2023, even though fewer people than expected have joined the list, the thinktank estimated in an analysis.

However, Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents care providers, said hospital bosses were “working flat out to tackle the backlog”. He highlighted the 132,000 staff vacancies across the health service and non-arrival so far of £500m ministers have pledged to boost social care, designed to cut the number of “delayed discharge” patients before winter.