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An analysis of NHS staff sickness absences has revealed that there were more staff off sick on any given month in 2022 than at the worst point in the year before the pandemic.
Indeed, there was an average of 17,000 additional staff off sick each day last year compared to pre -pandemic, with hospitals and community services seeing an 29% increase in staff absences.
This means that throughout 2022, roughly 27 million days were lost to sickness absence, equivalent to 74,500 full-time staff.
But levels of absence were not equal across the country, with some of the highest rates recorded in the North West (7.4% above average) and London (5.4% above average).
Ambulance services had some of the highest levels of sickness, with three ambulance trusts seeing one in 10 staff off sick on average every day in 2022.
This increasing burden of sickness absence is thought to be contributing to higher costs and disruption for NHS providers.
6 million days lost to mental health and wellbeing reasons
The analysis of NHS data further compounds the idea that NHS staff are increasingly suffering from work-related stress.
High levels of staff sickness add further pressure on remaining staff, and is a major push factor for staff leaving, leading to further disruption for patients and services.
Indeed, there has been a stark rise in the number of staff taking sick days for anxiety, stress and burnout, which now account for a quarter of sick days.
In total across 2022, some 6 million working days were lost in total to mental health and wellbeing reasons.
This absence rate is well above the public sector average, and Nuffield Trust Senior Fellow Dr Billy Palmer says more needs to be done to bring these levels down.
Working conditions must be improved if sickness rates are to come down
“The health service is grappling with a difficult new normal when it comes to staff sickness leave. The increasing numbers taking time away from work feeds into a seemingly unsustainable cycle of increased work leading to burnout and then more people choosing to leave,” Dr Palmer said.
“Monthly sickness absence rates last year never once fell below even the worst point pre-pandemic. These sustained, higher rates of sickness absence are equivalent to taking some 17,000 staff out of the NHS.”
Dr Palmer said as well as improving recruitment and retention, more needs to be done to improve working conditions for staff and protect them from illness.
“The NHS workforce plan needs to have concrete support to enable employers to improve NHS staff experience if the service is to break this cycle of staff absences, sickness and leaving rates,” he said.