NHS workers are distressed, afraid and unable to sleep – how much longer before they burn out?

A principal of major incident management is to preserve the workers, without which there is no rescue. But with such workforce shortages how will this happen? There is no reserve, writes Alison Leary

NHS staff applaud themselves and their colleagues at the entrance of the Royal Liverpool Hospital on Thursday (Getty)

The UK is currently caught in a pandemic which is putting an enormous demand on the NHS and social care. But what is the NHS? The NHS is its workforce and its reach extends from intensive care units in acute hospitals to community pharmacy.

It’s a big complex system with a very diverse yet purposeful workforce of more than one and a half million people with a commitment to a common mission that many other sectors can only dream of.

Even before the pandemic, it was a workforce under extreme pressure. With more than 100,000 vacancies of which over 40,000 are registered nurses, dealing with the massive surge caused by Covid-19 has stretched that workforce even further and put additional pressure on the organisations and individuals who must provide care.