FOI 25-070 Paramedic Mental Health Absences
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-070 Paramedic Mental Health Absences
- Request Date
- 06 Feb 2025
- Response Date
- 05 Mar 2025
- Information Requested
1. The number of days of paramedic staff time lost due to absence relating to mental ill health in each of the following calendar years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
2. The same as above, broken down by role/position and location- Response
The wellbeing of our hardworking staff is a key priority for the Service, and we have put additional measures in place and increased support over the last year in line with our Health and Wellbeing Strategy. We have also been working in partnership with key hospital sites to reduce delays in patient handover.
We are thankful to all our staff, who have been doing an incredible job in very difficult circumstances. In addition, over the last 3 years, we’ve recruited a record 1,388 staff, introduced 52 additional ambulances, aligned shift patterns to meet patient demand and expanded into 10 new locations as part of our Demand and Capacity Programme.
Please see attached an Excel spreadsheet showing the figures requested.
The first tab details the total absence hours of Paramedic staff who have been absent with the sickness reason recorded as Anxiety/Stress/Depression.
The second tab details the same figures from paramedics broken down into Region. The Scottish Ambulance Service has under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing personal information and any further breakdown has the potential for the information to become identifiable.The data provided only goes as far back as 2019, information held before this is held on a legacy system that cannot be retrieved. It is for this reason I have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 to the information from 2015-2018, as information not held.
A. An employee may be counted in more than one year. For example: if employee is absent from January 2019 to 31 May 2020, they will be counted in the figures for 2019/20 and 2020/21.
B. An employee is counted in a year if they had an absence due to anxiety, stress or depression of any length of time in that year.
C. If an employee moved job role or area within a financial year and were absent in both roles or areas they will be counted across each of these.
D. We have split the information into job roles and areas. Due to small numbers, we are unable to break this down further and show the number of employees by both factors combined.- Response Documents
