Meeting of the Parliament 03 April 2019
I, too, thank all of those who look after all of us.
It is clear that workforce pressures are severely impacting the wellbeing of health and social care workers. That is the message that is coming from those on the front line. In May 2017, the Royal College of Nursing launched a survey of nursing and midwifery staff in the UK and received more than 3,300 responses from Scotland. The findings show clearly the impact that insufficient staffing has on staff wellbeing. More than half of respondents reported a shortfall in planned numbers of registered nursing staff on their most recent shift or day worked, with around two thirds having worked unplanned extra time. In addition, more than half of survey respondents said that care was compromised on their most recent shift. There is a clear correlation between those conditions and poor staff wellbeing. One respondent stated that
“when nursing staff are overstretched due to insufficient staffing, they often suffer the consequences personally. Not being able to stay hydrated, eat, or use the toilet impacts on their physical and emotional wellbeing.”
Conditions, therefore, are so poor that nurses are often unable to have their basic human needs met.
I acknowledge that the Scottish Government has taken positive steps to address workforce pressures, such as the new GP contract and the introduction of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Bill, and has increased nursing and midwifery student bursaries for next year. However, the workforce will not increase overnight, and there is significant cause for concern around staff wellbeing during the interim period.
There are significant pressures around the implementation of the new GP contract. Last year, the Royal College of General Practitioners commissioned a survey of its members that found that 35 per cent of those surveyed had spent consultation time explaining to patients why they had been offered appointments with other healthcare professionals instead of with a GP. That not only places strain on GPs, who have insufficient 10-minute consultations to see patients with increasingly complex health conditions, but causes distress to patients. The same survey reported that 60 per cent of respondents were aware of patients who had become distressed, angry or confused when signposted by medical practice receptionists. Changes to services as a result of the GP contract—as welcome as they may be—must be urgently communicated to Scotland’s population to ease the concerns of patients and lessen the strain on practice staff.
There are substantial pressures in the social care sector, where 15 per cent of social care workers work unpaid overtime, and 11 per cent are on zero-hours contracts. There is a significant disparity between the value of care and the support that carers receive, and it is important that professional caring is valued and considered an attractive career. Social care workers do difficult and essential work in people’s homes, in care homes and in communities, but social care remains one of the lowest-paid sectors, which fuels the gender pay gap.
Enable Scotland has called for the extension of the Scottish living wage to cover every hour that is worked by social care staff, including, as Jackie Baillie highlighted, overnight sleepover support. However, that must be properly funded by commissioners and, as we have heard, not all of them are doing so.
In February, I urged the Scottish Government to put fair work at the heart of Scotland’s care sector by adopting in full the recommendations of the fair work convention’s review, “Fair Work in Scotland’s Social Care Sector 2019”. It reported:
“Frontline workers feel respected for the work they do by their colleagues ... and their employers, but they do not feel particularly valued by Scottish Government or the wider public.”
We have to change that. Equitable pay is important, but we need to ensure that social care workers feel respected and supported.
There are positive measures that we can take to address staff wellbeing by ensuring that workers in all sectors feel valued and are fairly paid, but it is key that when changes are implemented to ease workforce pressures, we must communicate them properly.
We cannot have a healthy workforce—