Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and aim: Long-term unemployment leads to poorer health and increased inequalities. The Welfare Reform Bill, published on 14 January 2009, supports the progression back to work for incapacity benefit claimants.

Due to the chronic nature of endocrine conditions, affected patients may be at an increased risk of long-term unemployment. We do not currently hold data describing the unemployment or return to work rate for this group. Our aim is to describe this data.

Patient population, sampling and methods:: Adult patients of working age (≤65 years), registered on the institution’s patient database with the following conditions were included: Addison’s disease, Cushing’s syndrome/disease, Craniopharyngioma and Klinefelter’s syndrome. Patients excluded: current inpatients, patients with terminal disease and patients for whom no contact details were available. Our final sample included 174 patients. All patients were contacted by telephone, after working hours and at least 3 attempts to contact patients were made. One hundred and thirty (74.7%) responded, 2 (1.2%) declined participation and 42 (24.1%) were not contactable.

Results: Seventy-seven patients (59.2%) were satisfied with their current working status and ability to work. Nine of the 53 (40.8%) unemployed patients said that they would like to work but felt unsupported. A graded return to work was experienced as being useful.

Conclusion: Although our study is relatively small and does not include all endocrine conditions, it shows a high rate of unemployment: 40.8 vs 27.5% for the UK population (September 2009). By supporting this group of patients, an improved return to work rate may be achieved.