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A Lincolnshire hospital worker was left with an unmanageable workload during the pandemic which led to her becoming ill with stress.
Mrs L Trapps was left with no choice but to quit after her pleas for help went ignored, an employment tribunal has found.
The United Lincolnshire Health Trust has now offered its apologies to her.
The data protection clerk, who was based in Grantham hospital, had worked for the NHS trust part-time for nearly 30 years.
During the pandemic, other clinically-vulnerable staff were told to work from home, which left Mrs Trapps struggling under a greater workload.
In November 2020, she told a senior manager that her workload was excessive and she felt unable to take any time off.
She came away with the impression that more support would be given, but the manager told the tribunal that he never felt there was a need to.
Shortly after, Mrs Trapps went on sick leave for a “stress related condition”, the tribunal heard.
She returned to find her role hadn’t been covered, and her workload was higher than ever.
The ULHT has apologised for Mrs Trapps’ treatment | Photo: Google Street View
In April, she was informed that another part-time employee who assisted for ten hours a week would be changing departments, and wouldn’t be replaced.
The manager refused to believe there was a problem with the workload, saying the requests she dealt with had halved since the previous year.
This was despite the department missing the 30-day target for half of all GDPR requests.
The decision not to replace the other employee was “the last straw” for Mrs Trapps, who handed in her resignation shortly after.
She accused the trust of being “indifferent, uncaring and biased”.
The employment tribunal which sat in Nottingham found that “she was expected to do the work of a full time member of staff on her less than full time hours.”
It added that the senior manager had “no accurate sense of what the workload was” at any time.
The hospital trust has issued a full apology to her.
A spokesperson for ULHT said: “We fully accept the findings of the Employment Tribunal and would like to offer our sincere apologies to Mrs Trapps for the circumstances which led to this case being heard.
