Nuffield Trust - June 29th 2023
Billy Palmer and Lucina Rolewicz draw on published data to explore the trends in, reasons for, and impact of sickness absence in the NHS. The briefing primarily focuses on hospital and community services in England, since this is where most is known, although we do compare to trends in other sectors and health services in the other UK nations, where data permits.
Key points
- Monthly sickness absence rates over the last calendar year never once fell below even the peak in the pre-pandemic year and, on average, the reported rate for NHS staff across 2022 was 29% higher than in 2019 (5.6% v 4.3%).
- The reported level of sickness absence – some 27 million days across 2022 – equates, on average, to around 74,500 full-time equivalent staff, including 20,400 nurses and 2,900 doctors. This is likely to be a significant underestimate due to various causes of under-recording of the sickness absence rate.
- Over the course of 2022, some 6 million days were recorded for staff being sick due to mental health and wellbeing related reasons. The number of reported days of absences related to anxiety, stress, depression and other psychiatric illnesses increased by 26% between 2019 and 2022.
- High sickness absence is bad for NHS staff, bad for providers of health care in terms of costs and disruption to patient care, and expensive for the taxpayer. Sickness absence is also associated with a higher likelihood of staff leaving the NHS.
Further information - All is not well: Sickness absence in the NHS in England
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