A REPORT presented to hospital bosses shows high levels of staff absence in hospital departments of the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust.
Presented to the trust board, the report for 2016 details staff failing to turn up for work in some of the most critical areas of medical and nursing care.
Sickness absence was at 14.84 per cent at the critical decision ward (CDW) at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, at 10.97 per cent at the intensive care/high dependency unit (ICU/HDU) and at 9.55 per cent at the children's rainbow ward.
A different recent report, however, showed that overall sickness absence, which had stood at 69,067 days in 2014-15, dropped to 61,951 in 2015/16 among the 4,500 workforce.
Alison Balson, director of the trust's workforce, said: "The trust is incredibly pleased to see that yet again we are seeing an annual reduction in staff sickness levels of 0.61 per cent, which equates to a reduction of more than 7,000 days and helps to improve the continuity of care we are able to provide to our patients.
"We believe this reduction has been assisted by many different factors, including our human resources team and trade union colleagues supporting managers to provide staff with early advice on interventions."
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