NHS TAYSIDE lost more than a million working hours over 12 months due to staff calling in sick, writes Marjory Inglis, health reporter.

Newly-released figures for the period to the end of September last year reveal the staff group with the highest sickness absence rate is nursing and midwifery, far and away the largest group of NHS Tayside employees.

The breakdown also shows the health authority spent over £5 million on “bank” staff—workers who do not have permanent jobs but are called in when required to cover gaps.

The figures show 86.6% of the bank staff were nurses and midwives.

Sickness absence is increasingly coming under scrutiny as the Scottish Government has set a target for all health boards to reduce sickness absence to 4% by next March.

With the overall absence rate for NHS Tayside recorded as 5.4%, the health authority is falling short of the target, although showing an improvement on previous years.

NHS Tayside’s acting director of human resources, George Doherty, said a lot of work was being done to reduce absence rates and that would benefit patients by improving “continuity of care.”

A physiotherapy service set up to deal with NHS Tayside staff exclusively, allowing them to bypass the queue of patients waiting for treatment, has also proved successful. Staff absence due to muscle and joint problems has been cut by over 23% during the first year of operation of the staff physiotherapy service.

Mr Doherty was clearly pleased with the improvements made thus far but mindful of the task ahead to achieve the 4% target.

“We are looking to put in other supportive actions to help meet the 4% target and continue to chase it down,” said Mr Doherty.

While striving to meet the Government target for sickness absence, which Mr Doherty said was “challenging,” he pointed out that NHS Tayside compared favourably with other public sector employees in the UK.