London nurses and doctors urged to work extra shifts in ‘call to action’ by NHS England

NHS bosses sent appeal to staff on Christmas Eve with request to take on additional work over next three weeks as Covid cases surge

NHS bosses in London have appealed to nurses and doctors to work extra shifts (Getty Images)

Nurses, doctors and other NHS staff in London have been asked to work extra shifts on top of their normal duties to help hospitals in the capital cope during a wave of Covid-19 cases.

A leaked letter, sent to NHS staff on Christmas Eve and seen by The Independent, issued what it described as a “call to action” for NHS staff to take on additional shifts over the next three weeks, when hospital admissions are expected to peak.

Signed by London’s regional NHS director, Sir David Sloman, the letter said London was facing pressure from Covid-19, with hospital admissions “increasing sharply”.

It added: “We are aware that a number of staff have deferred leave, giving up much-needed family time, and are supporting colleagues in going the extra mile. Thank you.

“For those staff who have the skills and capacity to do so, particularly those who do not normally work in emergency services, we are asking you to please consider undertaking additional shifts over the next three weeks as we wait for the tier 4 restrictions to impact on infection rates.

“We know that this is not easy when you are tired but this is a ‘call to action’ to NHS colleagues to come forward if they can, as so many did during the first wave of the pandemic.”

The letter has sparked concerns over the consequences of asking already overstretched staff to work more, with experts saying it underlines the crisis in NHS staffing that has been made worse by Covid-19 forcing thousands more staff off work because of sickness or having to self-isolate.

Anita Charlesworth, director at the Health Foundation, said the NHS had been facing 100,000 vacancies even before the coronavirus pandemic.

She said: “Since 2010, the number of nurses working in the NHS has been broadly stable whereas the amount of work they are getting has increased 30 per cent. We are already asking nurses to work harder and to deliver more patient care and that is unsustainable.

“It takes years to train a nurse. In our system you simply cannot turn on extra capacity overnight.

“Either we are able to ask staff to work extra hours, but there is a real consequence for them doing that off the back of the past nine months, or we have to scale back other services. There are very few alternatives.”

She added: “The NHS is caught between a rock and a hard place. It is the product of years of under-investment in the workforce.

“We have known since March that one of the key challenges would be staffing. This surge is happening in winter when capacity is always pressured in the NHS.

“We must learn the lessons of this crisis and invest in our workforce going forward. We owe it to all those who have gone the extra mile and beyond during this pandemic.”

The NHS England letter said it was already doing everything it could to open up extra capacity in hospitals across London, increasing discharges to free up beds, and ensuring that staff had the equipment and protective clothing they needed.

It added: “We are matching patients to services in order to decompress units which are under most pressure and we are making every effort to ensure the vaccine is delivered to those who will benefit from it the most.”

Across London, hospitals have been forced to cancel operations and open up extra beds to cope with the rise in coronavirus cases, as rates doubled in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

NHS England has warned that the capital could run out of beds within weeks because of the surge in cases and admissions to hospital following the emergence of a new Covid variant that is more than 56 per cent more transmissible.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, told The Independent: “We are concerned about burnout across the whole of the NHS workforce. Our survey of trust leaders found 90 per cent were concerned about the strain on their workforce and we know this has been a persistent issue for the NHS even before the pandemic.

“We know the workforce is incredibly tired and we have seen over the past nine months increasing absence rates. One trust said their absence rate was more than double the level they would expect. That adds additional pressure.”

She said it had to be an individual’s decision on whether they would work extra shifts but that it needed to be recognised that the workforce was already depleted.

She added: “The pandemic has presented us with really difficult decisions. We need to be ready for demand going up really quite substantially after Christmas and while we do need to look after the health and wellbeing of our staff, the NHS has no choice but to turn to its own staff to provide the service.”