More than half of staff surveyed at an Essex hospital reported feeling ill due to stress last year.

Of those participating in the NHS staff survey, 51.2 per cent of workers in Harlow’s Princess Alexandra Hospital reported having felt unwell as a result of work-related stress in the last 12 months.

According to the survey, this is 6.1 per cent higher than the national average and only 0.3 per cent lower than the country’s worst result for this question.

Lance McCarthy, chief executive at The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT), said in a statement: “Thank you to all of our people who shared their feedback as part of the NHS Staff Survey 2022. Their voices help to shape the development of PAHT for the future.

"I recognise that the results raise a number of areas for improvement and we are committed to working together to implement changes to support our people’s experience of working at PAHT.”

Local figures from the staff survey were published in a trust report ahead of its board meeting this week (May 6). In Princess Alexandra, the survey had a response rate of 49.5 per cent.

According to the report, staff placed the trust better than the national average in 14 key questions, including over issues of reporting harassment and discrimination. The number of staff not coming into work when feeling unwell, reporting their last experience of bullying or harassment and not feeling pressure from managers to come into work when feeling ill have “significantly improved” over the last year.

But satisfaction with pay, the standard of treatment and insecurity regarding raising unsafe clinical practice concerns have “significantly worsened.”

Only 50.2 per cent of staff reported feeling “safe to speak up about anything that concerns me in this organisation,” 10.1 per cent lower than the national average.

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Meanwhile, 42.1 per cent said they would be happy with the standard of care if a friend or family needed treatment, 19.8 per cent below the national average.

The report also sets out a number of improvements in response to the results, including introducing wellbeing checks and smoking cessation support and creating tailored wellbeing support for protected characteristics. Eleven new Freedom to Speak Up Guardians have been appointed and other trust representatives are undergoing training regarding the issue of improving  learning and safety culture and encouraging people to openly share feedback.