THE number of frontline ambulance service workers taking time off work with stress has soared.
In the past five years, figures have more than trebled, with the number of reported cases rising from 61 to 217.
Last year, 48,156 working days were lost due to medical staff being unable to report for duty.
One of the service's latest board reports highlights sickness as an "area of concern" – with rates across all staff exceeding six per cent for the past three recorded months.
Bosses at East Midlands Ambulance Service said the figures were down to increased strain in the job but also staff feeling more comfortable about reporting stress-related illnesses.
A former paramedic and manager at EMAS, who did not want to be named but worked for the service for more than 15 years, said frontline staff coming into the job now would be lucky not to be burned out by stress within ten years.
He said: "It's more stressful than working in the police or the fire service. Someone will go to a child death, which is awful, and from there they can immediately go to another. But anyone would go to pieces after that job. That's made irrelevant if the targets need to be hit."
He added: "The morale of the staff can be measured by sickness levels. It is low.
"The volume of calls has gone up, as has the pressure."
In October, the service was called to a risk summit by concerned local health chiefs and ordered to improve.
It has since hired more frontline staff and, despite missing targets for responding to the most serious calls for six months in a row, figures for March were more positive.
The service responded to category Red1 and Red2 calls – which include heart attacks and strokes, within eight minutes – 73.95 per cent and 74.92 per cent of the time, just outside the target 75 per cent.
Dave Winter, the service's assistant operations director and Nottingham representative, said: "We are working with Unison. One of the things around stress-related sickness is a cultural thing. A few years ago, staff wouldn't go sick with stress because they felt it was a slight on their ability.
"We recognise stress and post-traumatic stress disorder and we have better mechanisms in place. We have counselling services in place.
"The fact that we recognise and support it better makes it easier to report it."
He added: "The demands of the job have got greater. There is a great deal of stress on any of our staff.
"We do want to get the numbers down. In Nottingham, the sickness has come down from 11 per cent to five per cent in the last few years. We do support people better and encourage phased returns."
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