Sixty seconds on . . . staff sickness

What’s the diagnosis?Sickness absence rates in NHS hospitals and community services have jumped by a huge 29% in the most recent calendar year from the year before the pandemic, an analysis by the Nuffield Trust shows.1 This equates to an average of 17 000 extra staff off sick each day.That’s a lot of rota gapsIndeed. The analysis of official NHS staff sickness data shows that more staff were off sick in any given month in 2022 than at the worst point in the year before the pandemic. In numerical terms, some 27 million days were lost to sickness absence last year: this is equivalent to 74 500 full time staff not at work, including 20 400 nurses and 2900 doctors.Were some departments sicker than others?Sickness absences rose across all types of NHS trusts, but ambulance services were the worst affected. Three ambulance trusts had one in 10 staff off sick…
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