MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th July, 2023) Almost three thirds of the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) workers believe that the quality of medical services in the country has significantly deteriorated over the past five years, a YouGov survey conducted for The Guardian said on Monday.
The opinion poll was conducted among 1,058 NHS workers across the country. In total, the NHS employs around 1.4 million people.
Staff were asked if they felt that the quality of medical services the NHS can offer had become better or worse over the past five years. About three thirds of them, or 74%, said "worse."
Some 71% of the respondents said they cannot devote as much time to treating patients as necessary due to excessive workload.
Only 3% of the British medical workers said they have more than enough time, and 2% said the quality of healthcare in the UK got better since 2018, according to the poll.
The chair of the academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Dr. Jeanette Dickson, said the NHS has been experiencing the most serious crisis in its 75-year history mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and "years of underfunding by successive governments," the newspaper said.
For months, the UK's NHS has suffered from a crisis mainly due to a severe shortage of workers. More and more people have been leaving the profession amid excessive workloads, low pay and a lack of opportunities to upgrade their skills. Thousands of UK ambulance workers staged protests during the winter, demanding higher wages amid the cost of living crisis.
