To consider going off sick over Xmas and New year?

[Rachjxx]

NHS admin worker here. Have worked in same team for nearly 5 years and every year, just before Xmas, the same colleague goes off sick for an extended period. Not sure of the specific reason, only that it's around the same lengthy period each year. Last year she went of a bit earlier than usual, was early November I think. Then back towards start of Feb.
Meanwhile I struggled on at work with a chronic health condition, even making sure my GP appointments weren't during work time. I've always been very conscious of being reliable at work and have an excellent attendance record .
This is why it grates that the same lady has the same pattern of sickness every year around Christmas. I know she has young children at home and a disabled partner, as well as an elderly parent to care for.. but surely everyone has committments!
I have a well known health condition that entails lengthy flare-ups and I'm genuinely thinking of going off sick myself this year over the festive period. My sister is getting married at Christmas and we also have relatives coming over from Australia, so I'm minded to 'have a flare up' around that time. It's a real struggle to get any festive time off work through the normal holiday request process at Christmas and new year (especially when I don't have young children).
My health is very genuine and I have regular consultations with GP about it and pain management. I don't see he'd struggle to issue me a sick note for a few weeks to buy me some time off.
Wwyd?

I can't imagine being proud of that level of piss taking.

This post is bating. Please go and troll somewhere else

Honestly I couldn’t care less about the company I work for. I’m not looking to progress there either and it makes my life easier when it’s school holidays.

You must have truly incompetent managers.

Maybe her reason is legit. You intend to go off whether it’s legit or not. I sympathise about the difficulty getting time off but what about the rest of your colleagues who will have to pick up your slack because you want to have some extra paid holiday?

She matches the rest of the company to be honest.

There's not caring and there's committing fraud on a regular basis and being proud of it. It's a disgusting attitude.

No, you don't. Stop telling porkies.

Luckily they didn’t as mines not a position that needed covering. But if they did that’s a shame. My health comes above my caring for them .

May as well

could you book it as holiday first ?

I agree.

Just because you work for the NHS doesn’t mean you have to play the martyr.

I’m private sector and I wouldn’t sit back and let a colleague get away with this year after year.

Then leave and go somewhere else! The rest of us had to work around our children and didn't take the piss like that!

Some do.

I've worked in the NHS for 30 years.

Clinical staff aren't exempt from piss-taking.

It was only 4 years ago that frontline staff were all told that pre-covid testing being available, any potential symptoms of covid meant 2 weeks off sick paid which also didn't count towards your sickness record.

And at that point, potential covid symptoms were basically anything that could be or look like cold/flu/respiratory related.

I was WFH by that point but knew numerous people who took advantage of that and were posting on FB from their gardens with their 2 weeks off.

It's important to note we were in an area with very, very low covid hospital rates so hospitals were virtually empty anyway. I'm not saying staff were abandoning very sick patients, there wasn't enough for staff to do on a normal shift.

I asked a colleague as a joke 'ooh you haven't taken your 2 weeks covid bonus holiday then?' and he laughed and said 'no, i'm waiting till it gets busy, there's hardly anything to do at work at the moment so it's already like a holiday'.

The shit the fan in my area towards winter. The months before that were a breeze for most staff working in the hospitals.

I was also receiving all the emails to staff saying there was an enormous amount of PPE (masks, gloves, aprons, not the full on PPE), toilet paper and paracetamol missing from wards and reminding everyone theft could not just result in job loss, and possible loss of professional registration but would be reported to the Police.

Funnily enough...all those things were in short supply for the public at that time and only clinical staff had access to paracetamol so...

It's only ever a small minority who do it and it in no way represents the majority of NHS staff but it happens. And with clinical staff too.

Are you in a union? If so raise the issue there from the perspective of the impact on your health and well-being for picking up the extra work every Christmas and then not getting any leave.

raise it with your manager who should be managing this. From a perspective of what impact it has on you any the team. Does your trust use the Bradford score? With sickness of that level they surely would reach various trigger points?

go place a bet somewhere that the member of staff will be off sick over this period!

The thing is you don't know what's going on with your colleague

It could be genuine - her whole family could've died in a plane crash on Christmas Day and the memory is awful or it could be another really genuine reason

You also don't know if their behaviour is being monitored and the pattern has been noticed as it's none of your business

If your colleague is off for months then they must be covered by a fit note. I don't know about her GP but my GP would not sign this unless there was a genuine reason.

Of course it’s not ok op. Maybe raise the issue of sickness with your line manager instead.

A patient or more could die - due to a lack of care. You have a moral obligation to be there. Report your colleague and get her extended sick leave investigated - do not add to the problem.

Talk about a toxic culture!

To those who have never worked for the NHS , it is extremely difficult to book Christmas and New Year as holiday, everyone wants it too. If the OP could have done that they would have!

I worked in the NHS for years…sadly, this happened all the time! Some people, if they couldn’t get the AL they wanted, just took it off sick, I worked with a lady who was long term sick, all the while she was enjoying holidays in Florida and Tenerife….its time the 6 months full pay/6 months half pay whilst being off sick stopped.

The issue is more that if your colleague is doing this every year why hasn't it been flagged and investigated? I speak as an ex senior manager in the NHS; we managed sickness absence very closely in the Trusts I worked.

same here.

Not sure about op's team but in ours we can't book Christmas leave until October. And then it's names in a hat if several want the same days to ensure everything is covered.

A patient could die because the OP isn’t at her desk doing admin tasks? I highly doubt it