THE DISPATCH
EMPLOYMENT
Top Doc’s prescription for combatting NHS staffing crisis – a four-day week
A top doctor reckons a four-day work week will help the NHS solve its ongoing staffing crisis.
Professor John Ashton says the model could help to address the burnout that is seeing health service staff quit or retire early.
“I think the four-day week will come over the next 10 years, and if the NHS doesn’t embrace it, the labour shortages will become even worse,” he told The Big Issue.
Ashton believes that a four-day week – without loss of pay – could “reduce sickness absence, improve morale which would improve the quality of what people are doing when they are working”.
The former president of the UK Faculty of Public Health has long been an advocate for bringing the standard working week down from five to four days.
Professor Ashton believes that it would help to address mental ill-health associated with overwork and burnout, and lead to greater job satisfaction and higher productivity.
Over 27,000 NHS staff voluntarily resigned from July to September last year, as reported in the i , the most since data collection began in 2011. Staff have warned that burnout, Covid trauma and increasingly unsustainable workloads are overwhelming the workforce.
Addressing NHS staff shortages was found to be the single most important thing that the government must do to address the record 5.8 million patient backlog, said
