Critical NHS staff in need of life-support

IMAGINE you have a vocation. Your work is a calling. You knew at the start youd never be rich but your passion for helping other people overrode the desire for smart cars and luxury holidays. You realised the responsibility would be crushing - your decision could mean life or death - yet you bravely shouldered the burden.

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You devoted yourself to the NHS because you believed with every fibre of your being the institution provided, free at the point of use, a level of care and medical excellence unparalleled in the world.

You are a doctor, a nurse, a paramedic, a radiographer, and you have studied for years to achieve unimpeachable expertise.

Yet, to your distress and bewilderment, you find yourself among the NHS staff taking more than 625,000 sick days for health in just one month.

Beleaguered workers are breaking under the pressure of trying to provide patients with Rolls-Royce care as the NHS buckles under a recruitment and retention crisis.