Sickness absence across NHS England hit 27 million days in 2022, according to analysis that shows the health service is still grappling with record levels of absence.
Monthly sickness absence rates in 2022 never once fell below the peak seen in 2019, analysis of NHS Digital figures by the Nuffield Trust has found.
The average reported absence rate for NHS England employees in 2022 stood at 5.6%, compared to 4.3% in 2019.
The think-tank estimated that the number of days lost to illness equated to around 74,500 full-time equivalent staff, but suggested the actual sickness absence rate within the NHS would have been higher, due to under-reporting.
NHS England sickness absence
Record number out of work due to long-term sickness
It suggested the increase was not unique to NHS England, with other public sector organisations and the NHS in Wales and Scotland seeing a similar increase in sickness absence. However, the rate was well above the public sector average of 3.6% in 2022.
The number of sick days taken because of mental health-related reasons (6 million) has increased in the NHS. Reported days of absence related to anxiety, stress, depression and other psychiatric illnesses increased by 26% between 2019 and 2022, and represented a quarter of all sick days taken.
However, NHS England sickness absence levels also crept up due to Covid, which represented around one in six days.
In the first week of 2022, during the Omicron wave, 30 NHS trusts reported having more than 1,000 staff absent on a given day through sickness or self-isolation. By the last week of the year, 11 trusts were still reporting over 1,000 absences.
“All types of NHS trust – from small to large and from acute to community – have, on average, seen a substantial increase,” the All is not well: Sickness absence in the NHS in England report says.
“Sixteen trusts had their sickness absence rates increase by over half between 2019 and 2022, and three ambulance trusts saw their rates soar to 10% across 2022.”
Absence increased across most staff groups. There was a 2.3 percentage point increase in the absence rate of ambulance staff, and a 3.2-point increase in the absence rate of ambulance support staff, the latter of which reported an absence rate of nearly 10% in 2022.
The report says: “The reported reasons for absences vary by staff group. Prior to the pandemic in 2019, midwives for example were more likely to have reported sickness absence for mental health reasons (28% of all absences) than doctors (24%). Moreover, around twice the proportion of reported sickness days for ambulance staff and clinical support staff related to musculoskeletal conditions than for doctors (17% compared to 9%).
“And in the last three years, some groups have been disproportionately affected by certain reasons for sickness absence. For example, reasons for absence relating to influenza, chest and respiratory problems, and infectious disease (i.e. those that could relate to Covid-19) for ambulance staff alone rose from equivalent to a 0.3% sickness absence rate to 1.9% (for all staff the sickness absence rate for those reasons alone increased from 0.4% to 1.5%).”
The research also found that:
- Around a sixth (16%) of the total bank and agency nurse and midwife use is to cover long-term sickness
- The number of NHS staff citing health as the reason for leaving their role has more than tripled in the decade to 2022, including increasing by 52% since 2019
- Of nurses, midwives and nursing associates leaving the professional register in 2022, physical and mental health was the second most commonly cited reason and burnout or exhaustion the third. Retirement was the most common reason.
The report says: “The NHS has a moral duty to protect the physical and mental health of its staff and, in doing so, can benefit the entire workforce and current and future patients. And, for this reason, understanding and ameliorating sickness absence levels are something that we hope will feature centrally in the highly anticipated NHS long-term workforce plan.“
NHS England has been approached for comment.
Meanwhile, separate research from wellbeing and performance platform GoodShape has found more employee sick days, across all industries, were taken in the first five months of 2023 than during the same period in 2021 when the Covid-19 infection rate was still high.
Comparing January-May 2023 with the same period in 2021, GoodShape found a 29% increase in sick days and a 79% increase in lost working days due to poor mental health
GoodShape CEO Alun Baker said: “The soaring rate of absence due to poor mental health among UK workers speaks for itself.
“Leaders went to great lengths to protect their people during Covid. Continuing that change should be the legacy of the pandemic. It’s entirely possible and beneficial for businesses to do so too.
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“Tracking wellbeing data is the start. Using that data to target early interventions and engagement in workplace health and wellbeing programs, should be standard operating procedure, as should their monitoring in terms of quality and efficacy.”
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