80 per cent rise in ambulance service staff leaving workforce

Over 33,000 ambulance staff in England have left the service since 2010, the figure for the last year alone was nearly 5,000, leading to concerns that patients may have to endure longer waits for blue-light emergencies.

There is an ongoing recruitment crisis, which left a workforce shortage of nearly 1,000 staff last year, and a third of ambulance crews have also been victims of violence in the last 12 months.

Jonathan Ashworth, shadow health secretary, said this crisis was evidence of a “retention and recruitment crisis afflicting our NHS.”

He added “Workforce shortages place huge pressures on ambulance services and its patients who too often are left stranded waiting longer and longer for an ambulance to arrive.”

These figures show the rate of staff leaving the ambulance service has steadily increased from the year 2010-11, and reached a record number of 5,002 staff in the year 2016-17.

This news comes amid reports of more than 200,000 nurses having left the NHS since 2010, with rising demand and poor work-life balance feared to be pushing people out of the NHS.

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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