Sick leave experience of civil servants in the government of Northern Ireland during 1958.

Abstract

In the absence of any completely satisfactory morbidity statistics comparable to the Registrar General's mortality records, covering the whole population, reports on the sickness experience of relatively small groups of people are available from time to time. Such groups are commonly select sections of the population for which figures have been specially compiled for one reason or another; the following are representative examples in this field. Barr (1960) reported in some detail on the sickness absence of the nurses of a Regional Hospital Board. Spratling (1957) described that of the employees of London Transport Executive in a most compre hensive way. Chiesman (1957) reported rates for various grades of post office staff and his data has been used by many workers for the purpose of special studies into the incidence of ischaemic heart disease and the like in various grades of post office employment (Morris, 1957; Reid, 1957). The morbidity experience amongst the staff of local authorities has been reported by Moss (1959) and Warren (1960). On a national scale data derived from the admin istration of the National Insurance Schemes are available for Great Britain and Northern Ireland on a sample basis. While there are limitation in this material, a broad picture of sickness occurring in a large section of population between the ages of 15 and 65 is available for study (Park and Kidd, 1958; Jones, 1959; Kidd and Park, 1959; 1960, a, b). It is important that consideration should be given to morbidity studies from all possible sources in an endeavour to obtain information of value in piecing together the pattern of community sickness; in what follows reference is made to the sickness experience of a relatively small population (about 7,000), comprising the non-industrial staff of the Civil Service of the Government of Northern Ireland. A survey of sick leave among civil servants in No thern Ireland was prepared from information received from Government Departments in respect of all spells of sick leave taken by their staffs during 1958. There were no serious epidemics during that year and, indeed, amongst insured persons in the Province, the average number absent from work during 1958 was the lowest since the inception of the National Insurance Schemes in 1948. A factual account of the results of this survey was given in a previous study, published elsewhere, by Kidd and Park (1960b). As established civil servants have to pass a medical examination before appointment, they are in a way selected lives and a different pattern of sickness from that of the rest of the insured working population in the Province would be expected. The survey revealed that civil servants did have on average more spells off work but that these spells were of shorter duration and in terms of days lost per head during the year amounted to about half that for the rest of the insured population in Northern Ireland. This experience may be unique to the civil service or, on the other hand, it may be typical of office staff generally. It is notable that, while the influence of occupation on mortality has been studied for many years, little is known of the influence of occupation on morbidity. Unfortunately no breakdown by occupation of the morbidity data from national insurance records in Northern Ireland is available.