Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS (a) doctors and (b) nurses have been signed off work due to (i) stress and (ii) other mental illness in each of the last five years.
Ben Gummer
The Department does not collect centrally data on how many doctors and nurses have been signed off work due to stress and other mental illness.
Employers across the National Health Service are responsible for reducing staff absences due to stress and mental illness through local sickness absence policies.
NHS England recently launched "A healthy NHS workforce"[1], a commitment in its Five Year Forward View[2] "to ensure the NHS as an employer sets a national example in the support it offers its own staff to stay healthy".
Working with Public Health England and NHS Employers, NHS England aims to improve NHS staff health spearheaded by a group of provider and commissioner organisations. Work will include ensuring board level leadership and engagement as well as line manager training to increase awareness of mental health issues, helping them manage staff in a way which is supportive to health and wellbeing.
The Department continues to commission NHS Employers to help trusts improve staff mental health and wellbeing through advice, guidance and good practice[3].
The launch in July of NHS Employers’ How are you feeling NHS? Toolkit[4] enables staff to talk more openly about their emotional health, helps trusts improve the assessment of the impact emotional wellbeing has on staff and patients and supports action planning to improve staff emotional health and wellbeing.
[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/2015/09/02/nhs-workplace/
[2] https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5yfv-web.pdf
[3] http://www.nhsemployers.org/search-results?q=supporting+staff+who+are+experiencing+mental+health+issues
[4] http://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/retain-and-improve/staff-experience/health-work-and-wellbeing/protecting-staff-and-preventing-ill-health/how-are-you-feeling-nhs-toolkit
