Burnout levels among practice staff have reached “emergency levels” following the pandemic, a top-level parliamentary report has warned.

The Health and Social Care Select Committee report on workforce burnout and resilience in the NHS and social care warns that only an overhaul of workforce planning can prevent further deterioration. The committee, chaired by former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP, was told that although COVID-19 has had a significant impact on workforce pressures, there were staff shortages across the NHS and social care before the pandemic, which were causing workforce burnout. The report highlights the fact that available funding was the driver behind planning, rather than the level of demand and staffing capacity needed to service it, adding that a combination of ministerial “judgements” and haggling between Government departments were “unsatisfactory substitutes” for objective long-term workforce planning for the NHS and care system.

“Workforce burnout across the NHS and care systems now presents an extraordinarily dangerous risk to the future functioning of both services,” said Mr Hunt. “An absence of proper, detailed workforce planning has contributed to this, and was exposed by the pandemic with its many demands on staff. However, staff shortages existed long before COVID-19. Staff face unacceptable pressure with chronic excessive workload identified as a key driver of workforce burnout. It will simply not be possible to address the backlog caused by the pandemic unless these issues are addressed. Achieving a long-term solution demands a complete overhaul of workforce planning. Those plans should be guided by the need to ensure that the long term supply of doctors, nurses and other clinicians is not constrained by short-term deficiencies in the number trained. Failure to address this will lead to not just more burnout but more expenditure on locum doctors and agency nurses.”

The report calls for Health Education England to publish objective, transparent and independently audited annual reports on workforce projections for NHS and social care for the next five, 10 and 20 years, including assessment of whether sufficient numbers are being trained. It also recommends that the Department of Health and Social Care should produce a People Plan for social care, which complements the ambitions published in the NHS People Plan and says resources for mental health support for health and care staff should be maintained as and when the NHS and social care return to “business as usual” after the pandemic.
The report pointed to specific challenges faced by staff from minority ethnic backgrounds regarding workplace culture, burnout and resilience, with clear evidence they had been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, while discrimination was also raised as a factor in burnout. Public Health England and the BAME Communities Advisory Group had identified a series of actions to address this problem and the committee said DHSC should now set out how it plans to implement those recommendations.

Dr David Wrigley, wellbeing lead at the British Medical Association, welcomed the findings. Dr Wrigley said: “The report has identified the seriousness of the situation within the health and care system and highlighted concerning figures from the BMA’s regular surveys, so now we’re calling on the Government to act on the recommendations and identify further solutions as a priority. If not, we risk missing an opportunity to create a sustainable and safe health and care system which is in the interest of both healthcare workers and patients alike.”

Royal College of GPs chair Professor Martin Marshall said: “General practice has made a remarkable contribution to the pandemic effort with GPs and our teams working flat out, delivering essential care to patients – a record of nearly 14 million consultations were delivered in the four weeks from mid-April to mid-May – as well as their leading role in the COVID vaccination programme, with 75% of vaccinations being administered in primary care. This report by the Health and Social Care Select Committee highlights the intense pressure that colleagues have faced across the health service – much of it as a direct result of inadequate staff numbers and workforce planning for the future. We simply don’t have enough GPs or other members of the practice team to meet demand and general practice is only set to get busier as we support our communities’ recovery from the pandemic. We urgently need to see action from government to resolve the workforce pressures facing general practice including delivering on their pledge of 6,000 more GPs and thousands more members of the wider practice team by 2024/2025.”