By Mikey Smith Hospitals shelled out £1.4 billion to recruitment agencies to cover shortages of nurses last year, official figures reveal. It represents a 60% increase in agency costs over the past five years. It comes as a survey found a third of NHS staff had taken time off work for mental health issues in the last year as the staffing crisis continued to grip the health service. UNISON, the union which carried out the survey of 12,000 health workers across the UK, said the findings reveal burnout among employees and mean many more could quit the profession altogether. Nurses, porters, 999 c…