Responding to the prime minister's speech earlier today about tackling the nation's 'sicknote culture', Professor Pat Cullen, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive said:
“Nursing staff are the largest single workforce in health and care, but they themselves are suffering from increasingly poor long-term health. The prime minister’s overtures about ‘sicknote culture’ will be deeply offensive to a profession hit hard by long COVID and a spiralling mental health crisis. Issues of population health are not ones that a government can simply instruct away.
"All workers require an occupational health assessment ahead of a possible return to work following long-term sickness and trade unions will continue to demand employers adhere to them.”
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