25.07.12
15 sickness absences per NHS worker – HSCIC
NHS workers took an average of 15 days sick leave last year, slightly lower than previous years, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has reported.
New figures show that 1.4 million staff inEnglandwere absent from work at the NHS for a combined 15.56 million days between 2011 and 2012; a rate of 4.12%. This has decreased slightly from 2010/11, when the rate was 4.16% and 4.4% in 2009/10.
The UK average is 5 to 5.5 days a year, or 1.8% of working hours, but this varies by gender and sector: men in the private sector lost 1.5% of working hours to sickness in 2011, women in the private sector 1.9%, men in the public sector 2%, and women in the public sector 3%.
In the NHS, ambulance workers had the highest rate of any main staff group at 6.18%, statistics demonstrated, while doctors excluding GPs had the lowest sickness rate at 1.19%. Rates of sickness generally decrease with the increasing pay grade.
Regionally, the NorthEast SHAarea had the highest sickness rate, at 4.55%. London SHA had the lowest at 3.51%.
HSCIC chief executive Tim Straughan said: “This information is vital to estimating lost days within the country’s largest workforce. Today’s report shows that generally, sickness absence has fallen compared to three years ago, with the sickness absence rate falling from 4.40% cent in 2009/10 to around 4.12% in 2011/12.
“Qualified ambulance workers have the highest rate of sickness absence of any NHS staff group; while the ‘other doctors in training’ group has the lowest.”
The report is at: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/absenceratesmar12
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