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Somewhere today, friends and colleagues will come to work, sit in their usual place and pause.
They’ll look across at an empty desk.
The computer screen will be black. No familiar shape sitting in the chair.
Are they late for work? Delayed in traffic?
No.
They won’t be coming in today, or tomorrow, or the day after. No, they’re not on holiday…
… they are dead.
I’m told by colleagues, their friend took their own life. Identified by the police, by their NHS lanyard.
Their work was being downgraded and their department ‘thinned out’.
It became too much. The result, an empty chair. A vacant space. A void, tears will never fill.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Last week, at a staff workshop, people were asked how they were feeling. Our absent friend’s answer was; ‘suicidal’. It was passed off as workplace rhetoric. Banter. Not serious.
There have been concerns about staff suicide for quite a time. In 2023, NHSE published a ‘toolkit’, to help NHS organisations reduce the risk of staff suicide…
… a toolkit…
… like it’s possible to screw people back together. Bolt-on resilience.
Between 2011 and 2020, over 2,500 health and care workers have died by ending their own lives.
That’s about four deaths a week.
Healthcare staff, particularly female nurses and doctors, face a 24% higher risk of suicide, compared to the general population.
Recent data indicates, 1 in 10 workers reporting suicidal thoughts.
Rising Suicidal Ideation; a 2024 report from the RCN highlighted a 76% increase in nursing staff seeking help for suicidal thoughts compared to the previous year.
A recent review of the NMC reported; over the last year, six registrants who were undergoing Fitness to Practice processes, died by suicide.
There’s a data collection gap. We simply don’t know about all the suicides. Figures are likely, underestimates, due to the ‘invisible’ nature of some deaths and delay with coroners.
Getting to the bottom of the paradox;
'...why some people have the courage not to carry on,
... when they can’t find the bravery to carry on...'
... is a mystery. We can never see the whole picture, but…
… I can imagine someone living alone, absorbed in their daily grind of work-pressure, can find themselves in a cul-de-sac. Or, a family provider facing job-loss.
Work at the bedside, is gruelling.
Emotionally taut. Physically exhausting.
Work behind a desk brings its own risks. People are just as committed.
When they see their department or responsibilities chiselled away, paired back, they worry. Hollowed out, cut… they agonise.
How will they do the job? Can it be done? Does their contribution even matter?
The blunt truth. The ugly reality. It may only be spoken of in hushed, private moments but however it’s dressed up, however much sugar is laced on the pill…
… half of people working in NHSE and in ICBs are set for the axe. That’s the reality. Along with a further and emerging cull, right across the NHS.
As much as those with the secure jobs may tell the rest; voluntary redundancy is the ‘preferred’ route to the departure lounge, the fact is, it’s a rocky road, strewn with anxiety.
Calculations we never thought we should make. Tax implications we were oblivious of. Moving end-dates, the loss of colleagues, friends, confidants and raison-d’etre.
We all know, if there are not enough redundancy volunteers, no one will be safe.
In these scary times of acquisitive technology and political unrest, no-one's job is safe for life but I think everyone is entitled to a life where they are valued and treated decently in their job.
Especially…
… when, through no fault of their own, on really no more than a political whim, it comes crashing to an emergency stop….
… when there’s no-one to speak truth to power…
... when we all know, HMG is muddling along. A foolish boy has abandoned his custodianship of the NHS, squandered ambition in recklessness and on a wafer-thin majority will be gone at the next election.
… when no one will say; embarking on this level of disruption with no assessments, no risk analysis, no plan worth-the-name, no clear view of future work, chaotic leadership and not know what skills will be left…
… when no one will say, pause this madness.
Bizarrely, we are already recruiting new people to make up for staffing deficiencies.
We know the imperative is finance. Operations are being cancelled to preserve money. Medical school places not funded.
That's why...
... we need leaders who care and show it...
... leaders who care and walk it...
... leaders who know the fruitlessness of their task and are humble by it.
The NHS has never seen job losses on this scale. Neither has UK industry.
The biggest number previously?
British Airways; 12,000 job-cuts in April 2020.
The NHS is set to lose 18,000, non-clinical staff.
In early 2025, a survey found 47% of Trusts were cutting services and 37% were cutting clinical posts.
No one was prepared for this .
No one in the DH+ has the training, or experience in how to do it, but most of all,
No one should think any of this is worth a single life...
... and say so.
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