More than 10,000 patient safety concerns were flagged up by worried NHS Fife staff last year, shock new figures have revealed.
The stark findings became public as it emerged workers told managers that they were anxious about being short-staffed almost every day in the kingdom between last April and this March.
Both Fife and Tayside have recorded sharp increases over the past five years, leading to criticism of how the health service is being run across Scotland as a whole.
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: “This rising trend in Fife is being mirrored across the country, and is indicative of a real problem on hospital wards.
“When it is the workers themselves raising problems of this nature, rather than patients and visitors, it really is time to sit up and take notice.
“The Scottish Government has had a slap-dash approach to staffing levels for too long, and now we’re seeing the results of that in this rising number of formal concerns being lodged,” he said.
Workers raised concerns about levels of staffing 275 times last year, equivalent to one official register of worry every 1.3 days.
That is more than double the 116 recorded in 2010/11.
Issues of patient safety which include clinical and non-clinical incidents such as falls, loss of belongings and delays following calls for assistance increased from 6,690 in 2010/11 up to 10,552 last year.
NHS Fife medical director Dr Frances Elliot said: “Patient safety is, and remains, NHS Fife’s single biggest priority.
“We note that reporting in Fife has increased year-on-year.
“As a board, such an improvement is welcomed as we believe it to be a sign of a strong organisational culture in patient safety.”
It emerged last month that similar issues have hit NHS Tayside, with workers flagging up nearly 50 times more staffing concerns than they did five years ago.
An NHS Tayside spokeswoman said patient care was a primary concern, adding that all reported incidents were investigated, and action taken if required.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson raised the national issue with Nicola Sturgeon at last week’s First Minister’s Questions.
The SNP leader said: “Any member of staff in the health service who has concerns about any aspect of the delivery of healthcare is right to raise those concerns with health managers, and health managers have a duty to respond to and address those concerns.”