A quarter of staff absences at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust are stress-related

NHS Digital figures show there were roughly 82,200 full-time equivalent days lost due to stress-related absences in the year to June at NUH – which runs Queen’s Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital – accounting for 26 per cent of the total 315,800 days lost.

It is down from 28.6 per cent of staff absences in 2021-22.

The figures cover all professionally qualified clinical staff, clinical support staff, and infrastructure support staff who were absent due to anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illnesses.

Alex Baylis, from health think tank The King's Fund, said: "Workload pressure can particularly come from things like working extra hours, or managing a higher number of patients, because of staff shortages.

"It can build up if that’s the situation day after day.

“And it can be exacerbated by things like working across chaotic teams or processes, not having the equipment that’s needed, not having breaks, or unsupportive managers."

While leadership at team level is essential in supporting staff, Mr Baylis added the overall NHS staff shortages must be addressed.

He added: "Although everyone wants to reduce long waiting times as quickly as possible, that must not override the need for a culture of supportive management and supervision.”

Across all NHS England organisations, 6.1 million FTE days were lost to stress-related staff absences.

It is relatively in line with the year prior but down significantly from 27.7 per cent in 2020-21.

Overall, 25.5 million days were lost to staff absences in 2022-23, marking a fall from 26.6 million days the year before.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "We are hugely grateful to NHS staff for their hard work and their health and wellbeing is of paramount importance.

"The NHS provides physical and mental health support – including targeted psychological support and treatment."

They added the Long Term Workforce Plan, backed by £2.4 billion in Government funding, focuses on recruiting and retaining more staff to make the NHS the ‘best place to work.’

Bel Asher, acting chief people officer at NUH said: “We take the health and wellbeing of our staff very seriously and monitor our sickness rates on a monthly basis to ensure we are aware of the health of our staff.

"Over the last 12 months our sickness rate has decreased from 5.39 per cent to 5.09 per cent.

"Stress and anxiety is the most common reason for staff absence and this can be caused by work or personal issues.

“We have ensured that a large part of our nationally-recognised staff wellbeing offer is focused on mental health.

"A wide range of services to support mental health, assist with financial wellbeing and help colleagues work on their physical health is also offered to staff.

"We also offer training for line managers on how to lead a healthy workforce, mental health conversation training and psychological first aid.

“We are focused and committed to improving the experience of all staff across NUH and improving our culture remains a top priority.

"We strongly encourage any colleagues who are experiencing stress at work to raise this so that we can help support those staff who need it.”