The significant pressure on NHS staff poses a ‘serious risk’ to vital reforms, a charity has warned in the wake of a survey showing high levels of burnout and emotional exhaustion in the workforce.
The 2025 NHS Staff Survey showed that 35% of health service staff found their work emotionally exhausting with about 31% saying they felt burnt out.
It also found that only a third of staff reported there were enough staff at their organisation for them
to do their job properly.
The Health Foundation said that these findings underlined the urgent need for a concrete workforce plan to improve working conditions, boost morale and enable staff to improve services.
Speaking after publication of the survey on Thursday 12 March, Ruth Thorlby, assistant director of policy at the charity said: ‘Today’s survey shows that NHS staff remain under significant pressure, posing a serious risk to the government’s ability to deliver planned reforms.
‘The government’s plans for reform rest on having a healthy and well-supported workforce to implement it. However, the survey suggests that the health service still has a mountain to climb to make this happen.’
The survey, which is based on responses from 766,285 staff, also found 42.36% of staff have felt unwell because of work-related stress in the last 12 months and 56.01% had gone into work in the last three months despite not feeling well enough to perform their duties.
Ms Thorlby said the survey underlined the ‘urgency’ of a concrete workforce plan to improve working conditions, boost morale and enable staff to improve services.
‘As well as ensuring that the NHS has adequate staff numbers in the future, the government’s forthcoming workforce plan must place equal importance on supporting the existing workforce,’ she added.
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive at The King’s Fund said it is ‘completely unacceptable’ that NHS staff continue to be subject to racism.
She highlighted survey findings that one-in-five black and minority ethnic staff reported facing abuse, bullying or harassment from patients or the public while 14% had faced similar behaviour from colleagues, managers or team leaders. This compared with 5% and 7% respectively for white staff.
Ms Woolnough said that the upcoming 10 Year Workforce Plan must put ‘anti-racism at its core’ and NHS leaders must embed it across their culture and leadership.
‘Anti-racism must be an action, not a label, and requires calling out discrimination, tackling subtle but harmful behaviours at play, and dismantling the systemic barriers that hold staff back to make the NHS a place people want to join and stay rather than leave,’ she added
The survey also found that almost one-in-seven NHS staff (14%) reported being physically attacked by a patient or the public last year – the highest rate for three years.
It also found nearly one-in-10 staff (9%) said they were subjected to discrimination from patients and the public – the highest rate on record.
While 88% of respondents felt their job made a difference to patients, the number of staff who would recommend their workplace to others fell slightly to 58%, down from 60.79% in 2024.
Danny Mortimer, director general (people) for NHS England, said: These figures paint a deeply-worrying picture of the abuse our hardworking NHS staff face.
He added: ‘Staff safety and wellbeing is paramount, and we want everyone experiencing any kind of unwanted incident to feel confident enough to report it.’
