1 September 2009:

A review of the health and well being of NHS staff has found high levels of sickness and absence and is calling for a major restructure of systems  to deal with the problems.

The NHS Health and Wellbeing Review found that on average, NHS staff take 10.7 sick days per year compared to 9.7 days being taken across the public sector as a whole and 6.4 days for the private sector. The cost associated to the absences is in the region of £1.7bn per year. The review found that absence in the NHS is reducing at a slower rate than in other parts of the public sector or in the private sector.

The report was led by Dr. Steve Boorman, chief medical adviser to the Royal Mail Group. 

He found incidents where staff continue to go to work when they are not fully fit or highly stressed. Staff also did not believe that line managers showed a positive interest in their health and well being.

Clive Lewis, Globis founder and managing director, refers to the association between conflict and health in his book The Definitive Guide to Workplace Mediation and Managing Conflict at Work. 

Clive comments that when relationships are poor and conflict is present, people may feel ill and will stay at home rather than come to work and face their opponent. The forerunner to Steve Boormans report was the ‘Working for a healthier tomorrow’ report authored by Dame Carol Black.  The correlation is mentioned in my book. Every organisation should have a strategy in place for building better relationships in the workplace. Conflict can also sometimes mean that although someone isn’t unwell, staying at home may be the easier option, thus adding to absenteeism problems. If structures aren’t in place to tackle conflict and to do things like conduct return to work interviews the problems will only get worse.

The NHS Health and Wellbeing Review makes a number of recommendations and says that improvements could save the NHS more than £555m a year and improve patient care.

Key recommendations include:

• Inclusion of staff health and wellbeing measures and performance monitoring in the NHS governaance frameworks
• Publication and monitoring of key health and wellbeing statistics, including annual data on sickness absence
• A national minimum standard of OH (Occupational Health) services across the NHS
• An improved provision of wellness and early intervention services for staff

At the launch of the review, David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, promised more funding over the next eight months.  The full report and analysis is available in the October edition of Occupational Health 

Health and wellbeing