Sickness among hospital staff is county's highest

The organisation said the number of staff going off ill was higher than other hospital trusts in Sussex.

The news was laid bare this week by Darren Grayson, chief executive of East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, which also runs Eastbourne's DGH.

He said: "It is quite right and proper staff take time off when they are ill and unfit for work for both their own sake and for that of our patients. However, as an organisation our sickness levels are higher than that of surrounding hospital trusts.

"At the end of July our sickness rate was 4.27 per cent which equates to more than 71,000 working days lost over a year.

"We need to reduce our sickness level and we have set ourselves a target of reducing to three per cent by March 2013 with a milestone of reaching 3.9 per cent by the end of March 2011.

"Currently there is a lot of national focus and publicity on reducing waste and inefficiency within the public sector and reducing sickness is an obvious area to look at."

At the end of last month the Observer reported that the hospital trust was borrowing 6million from the Government in a bid to get its finances back on track. It has already overspent by 159,000 since April 1 when the new financial year started and has seen a high demand on its services.

The trust has also paid out huge amounts of extra cash on hiring doctors and nurses from outside agencies and was criticised in March for paying 170,000 to outgoing chief executive Kim Hodgson.

Mr Grayson said: "Reducing staff absence means reducing locum and agency costs. We need to understand the symptoms and underlying causes of absenteeism and work with people to help address them.

"Since the 2009 annual NHS staff survey we have introduced a number of measures to improve the work experience.

"In June we undertook a 'pulse survey' to help track and gauge how staff feel about work.

"There will soon be another one later this month to explore the reasons why staff reported increased stress at work due to conflicting demands on time to help identify ways we can work with them."