762,975 nursing and midwifery days lost to mental ill health since 2020

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today urged the SNP Government to finally combat pressures faced by nurses and midwives, after research by his party revealed that nearly 800,000 days of nursing and midwifery staff time have been lost to mental ill health since 2020.

Freedom of information requests submitted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats to all of Scotland’s health boards revealed that:

• In the past four years, 762,975 days of nursing and midwifery staff time have been lost to mental ill health. This is the equivalent of 2,090 years.
• NHS Lanarkshire reported the highest number of nursing and midwifery days lost to mental ill health last year (2023/24), with a total of 24,342 days.
• NHS Fife also reported a high number of days lost to mental health absences in 2023/24, with a total of 22,481 days lost.

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

“Ever since Nicola Sturgeon cut nursing training places and claimed that was somehow ‘sensible’, nursing staff have faced a raft of pressures. These figures show that many of them now feel completely overwhelmed. This matters because when nurses are stressed and run off their feet, they are in no position to provide the highest quality care for their patients.

“The Health Secretary is making things even worse by sticking with the government’s botched NHS Recovery Plan - a plan that is failing staff, patients and services every single day.

“Nurses and midwives need solutions, not yet more years of SNP mismanagement.

“The government must urgently rewrite their failed recovery plan so that it prioritises the recruitment and retention of hardworking staff. That means taking measures to tackle burnout and creating a health and social care staff assembly to put to use the expertise of those who know our health service best.”