Staff sickness within the NHS in England reached a record high last year, with the health service losing almost 75,000 staff to illness.
The analysis by the Nuffield Trust of NHS Digital data, shared with the BBC, showed that mental health problems were the most common cause of illness, followed by cold, flu or influenza and infectious diseases.
The big rise in colds and infections is likely to be linked to coronavirus.
The figures display an absence rate – the proportion of days lost – of 5.6%, which is the equivalent to the NHS losing nearly 75,000 staff to sickness.
The NHS sickness rate, which is the highest since records began in 2010, is 3.6% above the public sector average. This is higher than during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 and a 29% rise on the 2019 rate.
Dr Billy Palmer, a senior Nuffield Trust fellow, said: “The health service is grappling with a difficult new normal when it comes to staff sickness leave. There has been a lot of focus on recruitment but we need more endeavour to improve the working conditions of existing staff and protect them from illness.
“The 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.”
Miriam Deakin, of NHS Providers, which represents health managers, said the findings “laid bare the psychological strain on staff”. She added that the absences came on top of 110,000 vacancies in the health service and warned the situation was having a “knock-on effect on patient care”.
The Unison head of health, Sara Gorton, said the rise in illness was due to the “unrelenting pressure” on the NHS. “Until the NHS has sufficient employees to care for and treat all the people needing its help, absence levels will keep going through the roof. If there’s to be a healthy NHS, it first needs a healthy workforce.”
The British Medical Association has said all four types of doctors working in the NHS could be locked in a wrangle with the government in the run-up to the general election, and GPs and specialist doctors may join junior doctors and hospital consultants in England in going on strike.
