NURSES are suffering nightmares and panic attacks due to understaffing in the NHS, a poll has revealed.

Workforce shortages are forcing many to keep working while ill, leaving them “broken” by stress, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said.

The union’s survey of more than 20,000 nursing staff found the numbers working while sick and citing stress as the leading cause are both at an eight-year high.

Almost two in three nurses — 65 per cent — work while ill multiple times a year, with stress the biggest cause of illness given, whereas those percentages were both near 50 per cent in 2017.

Seven in 10 nurses are also working over their contracted hours at least once a week, with the majority receiving no extra pay, the poll showed.

RCN general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said: “Nursing staff strive to do their best for every patient on every shift but they are left with the impossible task of caring for dozens and sometimes over a hundred at a time.

“This is hugely detrimental to patient outcomes, but there also needs to be action to address the devastating impact on staff themselves.

“These findings are yet more cold, hard evidence that there are simply too few nursing staff to meet growing demand.”

She called for “desperately needed” new and urgent investment to grow the workforce alongside the introduction of safety-critical nurse-patient ratios in all health and care settings.

Official NHS figures for June, the most recent available, show the overall sickness absence rate for NHS staff in England was 4.9 per cent, almost one in 20 members of staff.

Among nurses and health visitors the figure was 5.3 per cent, while it was 5.7 among midwives and 5.4 among ambulance workers.

Overall, 29 per cent of full-time equivalent days that were lost to sickness among NHS staff in June were due to anxiety and/or stress, 28 per cent among nurses.

There are now more than 25,000 nursing vacancies across Britain in the NHS alone, the RCN said.

The Department of Health & Social Care said: “We hugely value the work of talented nurses, and through our 10-year health plan we are taking action to improve conditions for the overworked and demoralised workforce we inherited.”