Health professionals in Scotland faced a lower risk of death during the first two waves of the pandemic compared to their counterparts in England, according to a study published by Scottish researchers.

Study lead Dr Serena Pattaro said the reasons behind the mortality gap were unclear but could be down to different workplace policies in high-risk professions.

The Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research fellow told healthandcare.scot the results seemed “controversial” but had been backed up by initial analysis.

“Both men and women working in health professional occupations have lower risk of mortality compared to  results obtained by a similar English-linked data study,” she said.

“A complex combination of policies and guidelines have been implemented in different national contexts and this may have resulted in different degrees of protection offered to health care workers.”

The analysis also revealed lower mortality rates among men working in caring personal services and care workers in Scotland compared to England.

In Scotland, 22 health professionals, 46 health care workers and 77 care workers died with covid-19 listed as involved between March 2020 and November 2021 according to data from the National Records of Scotland.

The health professional occupation, as measured by the census, is a wide group that includes medical and dental practitioners, nurses and midwives, psychologists, pharmacists, medical researchers, and vets.

The University of Glasgow researcher told heathandcare.scot: “Many of these occupations in Scotland have quite quickly moved, from the beginning of the pandemic, to offer services online so this offered a little bit of buffer or protection from the contraction of covid-19. This might be one explanation.”

However she added that it is difficult to draw a direct link between specific policies and the results due to the complex, ever-changing nature of guidance and more research is needed in this area.

The data research team’s next steps are to break down health professionals into smaller groups to study mortality in specific roles – but Dr Pattaro accepts this may prove challenging.

“One thing we are planning to look at is the health professional subcategories, but this is constrained by the fact that mortality is quite a rare event at the population level – keep in mind this is quite a large sample covering almost the whole population of Scotland.

“We could also look at admissions to intensive care and outcomes for subcategories of health professionals.”

The covid-19 death rate was found to be, overall, higher among adults in Scotland compared to England. A particular concern was ‘exceptionally high mortality rates’ among Scottish men working in essential elementary service occupations, such as kitchen assistants and waiters, as well as large goods vehicle and taxi drivers.

The findings come as part of a larger research project looking at household transmission, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council to advise the Scottish government in its covid-19 response.

Scottish population health data from between March 2020 and January 2021 was taken from Public Health Scotland’s database, then linked to occupations from the 2011 Census and an “innovative” unique property reference number.

Only people aged between 40 and 64 with occupations considered relatively stable were included, to take into account potentially outdated census information.

Dr Pattaro and her team at the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research will present their work at a researchers' network symposium organised by ADR UK in February.

Read more: Concerns over home deaths data gap; Insight: Where is the care data on unmet need?

 

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