Ill-health retirement: a survey of decision making by occupational physicians working for local authority fire and police services

AIMS: To investigate the effect of qualifications, experience and service on ill-health retirement decisions made by police force and fire brigade medical advisers. METHODS: Doctors advising UK fire and police authorities attending a conference were given 16 case summaries from experienced fire and police advisers and asked to predict the outcome in terms of return to work or ill-health retirement. The answers were scored by assessing whether the outcome predicted by the participant agreed with the case setter. Correlation coefficients were calculated and a kappa coefficient was determined for assessing inter-participant variation. RESULTS: Forty-seven doctors attended, 44 participated and the responses of 39 (86%) were analysed. Over half the doctors participating had held their post for less than 5 years. The majority (>50%) agreed with the case setter in 11 case summaries and in five cases the agreement was strong (>75%). The majority disagreed in five cases, with < or =80% dissenting in three cases. There was wide variation in the inter-participant variation (kappa = -0.333 to +0.5) but the total agreed score correlated significantly (P < 0.05) with experience and service as a fire or police adviser (kappa = 0.33) and ill-health retirement agreement correlated significantly with experience (kappa = 0.49). There was no correlation between the level of qualification and total correct decisions. CONCLUSIONS: Whilst we found general agreement overall, our results suggest that there is inconsistency in ill-health retirement decision making by police and fire service medical advisers in certain cases. Experience appears to improve the likelihood of agreement in decision making.