More than 3000 NHS staff on long-term sick leave in Scotland

By Magnus Gardham, DailyRecord.co.uk

More than 3000 NHS staff in Scotland are off work on long-term sick leave.

And the government faced calls for an official inquiry yesterday after unions blamed overwork, bullying and violence.

New figures showed 3393 NHS Scotland staff were on sick leave for at least 28 days at the end of March – putting a huge strain onresources.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Scotland’s biggest health board, had 975 workers on long-term leave.

There were 415 long-term absences in Lothian, 277 in Tayside and 275 in Grampian.

The Scottish Ambulance Service had 87 people absent for over a month. And NHS 24 – on the front-line dealing with swine flu inquiries – had 32 on long-term sick leave.

Labour health spokeswoman Cathy Jamieson, who asked for the information, said: “I’m deeply concerned by these figures. The Scottish government should launch an immediate inquiry to investigate why this figure is so high.

“The NHS have a duty of care towards all of their employees.

“I am worried that repeated demands for efficiency savings and cuts by the SNP government have increased the workload and put unfair pressure on staff.”

Matt McLaughlin of Unison, who represent health workers, said: “These figures are shocking enough in their own right but I would be interested to look at the reasons for these long-term sickness episodes.

“Unison are confident that there is a direct link between staff illhealth and the NHS employers failure to tackle issues such as stress, bullying and violence at work – all of which are on the increase.”

The NHS have a zero-tolerance policy on violence against staff.

But unions say physical and verbal abuse remains a big problem, especially in A&E departments and community health centres.

Figures for 2007-8 showed the overall sickness absence rate for the NHS’s 165,000 workers was 5.28 per cent, down slightly on 2006-7. The new figures – the first breakdown of long-term sickness levels – follow concern over high rates of absence in other public sector jobs.

A report from Audit Scotland showed local councils lost more than three million working days to illness last year.