To think this should be sick leave not annual leave?

It’s sick leave or special paid leave. No shift swapping where you are under pressure to be back in for the next shift. No annual leave or unpaid leave.

Reach out to OH. have you got reasonable adjustments in place? You should have. The onus is on your manager is to consider and make adjustments even if you think you don’t need them (eg such as sickness absence - it should be a given that anything relating to MS isn’t triggering absence management for short term frequent absences), but ideally in terms of adjustments you will have a good idea of what you need and a good OH team will document that in your letters and your manager should implement them.

to that end you should have a workplace adjustments document /health passport whatever it looks like. Lives in your staff file and follows you if you move wards etc so you don’t have to go through same process all the time.

ask your manager for all policies relating to sickness/absence/special leave / equality act and staff with disabilities. Study them read them understand them. Managers often don’t get them so you have to point out the obvious sometimes.

with any luck your trust will have an EDI team although they are sometimes as useful as a chocolate teapot but you never know - they could also help guide you to relevant policies.

are you in a union? If not please make sure you join one.

I’m nhs…I’ve done this many times…..always sick leave fully paid

if the nhs were more compassionate and had the correct processes in place including supportive reasonable adjustments they’d have a much better staff retention rate from employees with Long term illnesses and disability.

one planned surgery — I hope the policy has been through an EDI team and that it therefore doesn’t apply to surgeries for disabilities.

Going back to triggers. Say someone with epilepsy & say the trust trigger is set at 3 absences. In 12 mths

the staff member has had 1x cold/flu absence and 2x seizures absence,

they then have another cold /flu absence come back to work too quickly burn out and have another seizure absence so 5 in total. 3x disability 2x non disability. Are you putting them on stage 1 management?

You should always be in a trade union so you can be sure to have advice and representation during any dispute.
If you have advance warning then you’ll need to reach an agreement over what’s reasonable regarding your shifts as they’ve already been agreed; I’d expect sick leave for a planned procedure.
A warning: in our trust we are allowed one planned surgery on top of usual sick leave triggers. As you’re disabled your allowance before stage 1 sickness review should be increased / not unlimited - I wouldn’t expect much compassion.
Hospitals are struggling for staff yet expected to make redundancies / savings this year whilst improving turnover.

It’s hospital treatment, therefore not annual leave

This is common but the minute you have the treatment you are then “sick” as you will not be able to work. it’s all bollox, the worse of corporate bollox to keep management happy and sick down by not actually pointing this out to people.
but once you have the treatment you are sick.

I've been diagnosed with MS this year. My employer has been really supportive. I don't get absence triggers for my MS sickness.

I'm also a manager and things like this i tell ku team to just take them, as long as I know where they are, that's all good.

Infuriates me.

Check the sickness and leave policies for your trust. The answer will be in there.
Would changing your shifts around work? I only work 3 days a week. So if the infusion was Thursday, I could arrange to work Monday- Wednesday, have the infusion Thursday and then I'd be on days off the rest of the week anyway. Obviously if you work Monday to Friday, that wouldn't be possible.

I also work for the NHS. This should absoutly be sick leave. As others have said go to HR to clarify.

I get 2 days disability leace per year but could be up to 10 days disability leave depending on condition/symptoms. Does your empolyer offer this?

Disabled employees have fewer legal rights than pregnant employees around appointments.

Pregnant employees have the right to paid time off for appointments, disabled employees don't.

She said she wanted to just give it me off but had been told she couldn’t.

Told by who?

Always best to have your own conversation with HR when such things arrives. Saves all the drama and managers who don’t know the correct procedures. Just contact HR and you’ll know where you stand very quickly without guess work from mumsnetters.

Oh this infuriates me! MS is a disability and you should be protected under the Equality Act. Some companies will be good but not all. Ideally don't take holiday to go to appointments, or switch shifts! You already deal with the burden of an illness and you need that holiday for rest. Pregnant employees are allowed to go to their appointments and not take it as holiday!

In my nhs job I get paid leave (not annual leave and not sick leave) for medical appointments. I would have thought this would be the same? It shouldn’t be annual leave.

If you're speaking to HR, talk to them about whether they have adjusted your absence triggers for disability sickness absence so you know where you stand if you're going to need the day after treatment off sick.

As a pp has said, disregarding all disability absence wouldn't be reasonable, but they should be making some adjustment to the triggers.

Why the hell should she have to use annual leave for treatment for a long term disability?? She absolutely does not.

And we aren’t talking about long term sickness we are talking about days here and there

of course an employer can dismiss for long term absence but for disability they have to jump through hoops to ensure it’s fair and reasonable to dismiss

This would be paid special leave for us, moving to unpaid or the option to take annual leave after a generous paid allowance.

I don't think your employer are acting unlawfully but as you're NHS I'd expect an amount of paid leave for a required medical treatment.

Of course you can use disability related sickness in absence management, an unlimited amount of time off is not a reasonable adjustment.

OP I think you should take the actual treatment day as annual leave, then any resulting days off due to being unwell from the treatment should be taken as sickness. Do you have any adjusted triggers or similar for absence management?

If you've got time to give notice ideally you're meant to try and swap the shift but not always possible so you tell them. Mine had a massive go at me as I had a physio appointment during work time (couldn't swap shift due to childcare), i was pregnant and trying to do whatever to stay in work longer as I had pelvic pain- safe to say they were pretty mad. Was bad enough when I had to go for a rescan (first app in the morning), nobody handed it over so the day prior I mentioned it again nobody had any idea 😅

We'd get disability leave for this (a type of special leave). So not sick or annual leave. CS.