To go off sick with stress when colleague is off sick

[Mumsworkneverdone]

Hi I a community nurse and I currently work part time but I am expected to cover the work of my full time colleague who is off sick with stress as well as my own work but my manager is not listening when I say I cannot cover this, I’m struggling to sleep I’m so stressed. My question is would so be unreasonable to go off sick with stress myself?
And If I go off sick with stress will this affect my employment record as a nurse? Part off me wants to just walk out and leave them to it.

i wouldn't even say that much. Just email (agree with getting a paper trail) or phone call with follow-up email confirming what you discussed.

You don't need to mention colleague, or that they are off sick or for how long that might be. Just the facts: we have X patients normally spread between 1.5 people, which visits should i prioritise in my 0.5 hours? That is it.

That way, manager has to manage, and it can never ever come to bite you in the bum that you were shirking your own work, that you were digging on a sick colleague etc. You were being pro-active in nudging your manager for a solution.

You’re not sick, so park that idea. Do your duties to the best of your ability within your contracted time and anything you can’t do needs to be clearly communicated to whoever’s management responsibility it is to work that out. Whether they listen or not, that’s not your problem. Clear communication and assertiveness is what’s needed, not adding to the problem with you going off.

No it won't

Sorry quoted wrong post

So in your opinion poor mental health isn't being sick?

mental health is important - but it is the responsible employee's duty, i would say, to put steps in place to stop it getting as far as going off sick.

It is the way of late stage capitalism that more and more work is piled on fewer and fewer employees. And it is really hard to say no. But nobody in their right minds wouldn't have immediately said to their boss "mate, i'm half a person, you can't increase my workload by 200% just like that"

So this is what OP needs to do as a first step. Then if no solution other than "soldier on" is forthcoming, i would suggest that OP then takes it into her own hands, says "these are the patients i can manage in my time - please organise cover for these other patients" cc to boss of boss. Do that every few days if OP can see that nobody is picking up the work. (it is, after all, at this stage a safeguarding issue, right? for the patients?) Always say "i can manage X, someone else must manage Y"

And then if her mental health is impacted (stress) go to the GP.

@Mumsworkneverdone I feel for you, treating you like this is appalling.

Tell me you are not a Nurse without telling me you are not a Nurse!!!! You have noooooo idea what you are talking about so best shut up eh?

Aargh clicked unreasonable by mistake. You are not being unreasonable. I was a community midwife before retirement. Managers never seemed to get their heads around the fact that when someone goes on long term sick leave it affects the remaining workforce especially in a small team. They just break everyone one after the other. You need to put yourself first and if it's affecting your health you need to look after yourself. If you keep going they are just going to use you up. Such is the staffing in the nhs.

To answer your overall question, no it won’t affecf your employability elsewhere unless you have longstanding sickness absence issues eg have been off multiple times, on HIP’s etc multiple times.

First of all you need to formally address your issues with your manager, even if you do this verbally follow up with an email so theres a paper trail.

Self refer to OH

If you need to go off sick then access your GP, you can still do the above and be off sick

Its in your managers favour to try and keep you at work, certainly in our trust if someone goes off with Work related stress the manager then has to answer to why its got to this situation and why they haven’t recognised their staff member was struggling, and what support they should of/ could of put in place.

If your looking elsewhere please don’t be put off going off sick if you feel you need it. I moved roles whilst off sick for work related stress and it was not detrimental (role was a mix of mid management/clinical).

Look after yourself

You could go off sick in the short term and not tell them what you are off sick with just get a sick cert from the gp and tell them it’s confidential. This sounds like an extremely unfair situation where no one is taking you into account so why should you care. The manager can sort it out . I really don’t blame you at all. Also , go to the union. You should have gone to the union first thing when this happened. It’s your registration that will be on the line if anything happens to any of the patients so this needs immediate action. It really sickens me the way nurses are treated to be quite honest .

let's not pretend that nurses don't have agency though. It is absolutely the first step to speak to manager about workload.

Clearly don’t work in the NHS and have a registration to maintain. Patients lives are at stake and the immense pressure of making a mistake/ missing something is enough at the best of times, without the pressure of added workload so rushing to try and fit the extras in.

Do you really advocate saying sorry i won’t be going to see the diabetic my workloads too high, i’ll see them in the morning, then turning up to best case scenario theyre in keto-acidosis requiring admission, potentially critical care worst case scenario dead.

The relatives and the NMC don’t give a shit there was work place pressures they care about the patient harmed.

it absolutely is your problem as a nurse to if the managers don’t listen because when it boils down it it its not them on the firing line its the nurse who did/or didn’t do something.

NHS burnout is real.

She already did. It’s not as simple as you think it is when none of the managers have your back and act like you are the problem when you highlight unfair issues. I don’t know if you have ever worked as a nurse but it can be an extremely toxic environment

Toxic to the core ! If you haven’t worked there you would never understand.

How will going off sick change any of that?

Surely caring for 5 patients but not taking on 5 more is better than leaving entirely and the whole 10 patients go unattended?

I work in the NHS before you start. I know the pressures.

let the manager deal with the patients . That’s her job if staff are sick.

Certainly in our health board. So many now work bank shifts rather than within the board.

Being off sick with stress (or anything else for that matter) is always going to affect colleagues. The difference is that stress sick leave usually lasts for longer than for, say, a heavy cold. It may be a management responsibility to arrange cover, but that’s not always possible without imposing on people who are already doing the same stressful job that caused the initial sickness, with a domino effect. There is, therefore, a case for thinking ‘if you can’t stand the heat . . .’

I doubt her manager is clinical.

I agree it's the managers job to sort the 5 additional patients, but OP is creating the rest of the problem by leaving. Do your patient case load, you cannot manage any more.

It seems as though OP hasn't actually said to anyone it's impossible to do more patients in day, she's just quietly drowning and now wants to abruptly leave.

And yes, going off sick will come up in future hiring. If I was on the panel the actual sickness wouldn't bother me, the tactical use of it would.

The ten patients shouldn’t be left with no care if a nurse is off sick . It’s not the nurse who is off sick’s job to worry about that . It’s up to the manager to have a contingency plan in place. And where I’m from nurse managers are clinical . They may not have clinical duties in their daily job but they would be absolutely expected to step up or find someone else if staff where off sick. It wouldn’t be acceptable to be like “oh everyone is off sick let’s just leave the patients with no care “ Is it like that in the nhs ?

Speak with your union. Get a paper trail together. State the facts with hours, dates, proof of requests for you to cover other role etc.

I'd say the goal is to get back to the hours and workload you actually signed up for not to go on sick leave. That's where the challenge is. You going on leave won't solve the issue or make the manager behave in any other way. I understand that it is stressful though.

I agree it's not the nurse who's off sick to worry about it! But there's no reason for OP to leave rather than care for her own patients and not take on others.

The poster I was replying to was saying that OP couldn't possibly NOT take on the extra work as it would leave diabetics in a coma. And that's why nurses are so stressed because they have no choice. But leaving completely seems to be an OK solution, rather than only seeing some.

@Carefto im not nhs but where I live we absolutely would not be allowed discuss someone’s sick leave and whether we thought it may be tactical on an interview panel . It would be considered completely unethical and unprofessional .

Who said anything about discussing it? People are capable of independent thought

my manager is not listening when I say I cannot cover this

Ok, so what actually happens when the work isn't done?