One in four ambulance service staff now plan to quit with more than half saying they have witnessed deaths caused by NHS delays, shock polls reveal.
Record numbers of overworked NHS staff say they plan to leave “as soon as they can find a new job” according to the NHS Staff Survey of 636,000 workers.
Ambulance staff saw a huge jump with 24% reporting their intention to quit as soon as they find a new job in 2022, up from 16.8% in 2020.
And 40% said they had seen errors or near misses in the past year that harmed, or could have harmed, patients or members of NHS staff
In a separate poll for Channel 4’s Dispatches, 53% of ambulance workers said they had witnessed a death caused by NHS delays and 52% had spent a whole shift waiting outside A&E with patients.
Overall 17.3% of staff say they will quit as soon as they find another job, up from 16.6% in 2021 and 14% in 2020.
It came as striking workers agreed to continue pay talks with Government after failing to reach an agreement in the first week of negotiations.
Carried out since 2003, the survey is one of the largest staff surveys in the world including workers at 264 NHS organisations in England, including all 215 trusts.
They report that standards of NHS care are falling with 62.9% happy with the standard of care provided by their organisation in 2022, down from 67.8% the previous year and 74.2% in 2020.
Just 26% say there are enough staff at their organisation “to do their job properly” - down from 38% in 2020.
Em Wilkinson-Brice, staffing director at NHS England, said: “Our staff have shown time and time again how vital they are to the country, and I would like to thank each and every one of them for the work they do for patients every day.
“In the last 12 months alone, staff have been under unimaginable pressure.”
NHS trade unions are currently in talks with Health Secretary Steve Barclay about trying to resolve the NHS pay dispute, after a decade of below inflation deals.
Helga Pile, deputy head of health at Unison, the biggest NHS union, said: “No one should be in any doubt as to the scale of the problems facing the NHS.
“Years of government neglect and underinvestment are to blame.”
Around a third of all staff say they “often thought about leaving their organisation”.
The numbers “satisfied with their level of pay” has seen a steep drop off, at just 25.6% in 2022, down from 38% in 2019.
The NHS Staff Survey showed a large decline in the proportion of staff agreeing that if a friend or relative needed treatment, they would be happy with the standard of care provided by their workplace.
The poll, collated by the charity Picker on behalf of NHS England, found that just 62.9% of staff agreed with this, down 11.3% on 2020.
This decline was most marked in ambulance trusts, down 18% on 2020.
Chris Graham, chief executive at Picker, said: “Staff in ambulance trusts have consistently reported worse experiences of working in the NHS… but there has been a steep increase in ambulance staff who are thinking of leaving since the pandemic.”
Four in 10 ambulance workers also told the survey they have seen errors or near misses over the last year that harmed, or could harm, patients or staff.
Laurence Turner, policy head at the GMB union, which represents ambulance staff, said: “Pay satisfaction is plummeting, vacancies have rocketed, and ambulance workers are planning on leaving in droves.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “NHS staff are slogging their guts out, but there simply aren’t enough of them.
“Staff are exasperated by how overstretched they are, and one in three wouldn’t be happy for their family to be treated by their service. We cannot go on like this.”
There are currently 124,000 advertised staffing vacancies in England.
Overall one in seven NHS workers had experienced physical violence from patients or their relatives.
Some 45% of staff had felt unwell due to work-related stress and 57% had come in to work in the last three months despite not feeling well enough to perform.
Just 57% would recommend their employer as a place to work, down from 67% in 2020 and 59% in 2021.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “The Government, NHS employers and unions representing the Agenda for Change workforce have been holding constructive and meaningful discussions over the past few days, covering pay and non-pay matters. These talks will continue into next week.”
