UK service personnel medical discharges: financial year 2023/24
This official statistic provides information on medical discharges among UK regular service personnel. The bulletin focuses on medical discharges within the most recent financial year including demographic factors and the medical causes leading to the discharge, as well as providing time trends for the last ten years.
When a medical condition or fitness issue affects a member of the UK armed forces, their ability to perform their duties is assessed. If they are unable to perform their duties and alternative employment within the armed forces is not available, personnel may be medically discharged. Medically discharged personnel leave the armed forces prior to the completion of their contract and may be entitled to additional payments as part of their military pension.
The medical reason for the discharge is recorded and categorised. It is possible for personnel to be medically discharged for multiple reasons
Abstract: Context: In response to the opioid crisis, federal guidelines were implemented, including the Veterans Health Administration's (VA) Opioid Safety Initiative in 2013. The impact of policies on patients near the end of life is unknown. Objective: Examine temporal trends in opioid prescribing, pain, and opioid overdoses among Veterans near the end of life. Methods: Retrospective, time series analysis of VA decedents between October 2009 and September 2018 whose next-of-kin participated in VA's Bereaved Family Survey (BFS). Using multivariate regression to adjust for sociodemographic and clinical covariates, we examined temporal trends in outpatient opioid prescribing, uncontrolled pain based on BFS report, and opioid overdose-related hospitalizations, in the last month of life, overall and by clinical diagnosis (cancer versus non-cancer). Results: Among 79,409 decedents, mean daily outpatient opioid dose in morphine milligram equivalents in the last month of life decreased from 4.6 mg in 2010 to 2.1 mg in 2018 (adjusted change -0.20 mg/year; P