All The News Thats Not Fit To Print?

 It was reported this week that nearly a quarter of British Army soldiers are medically unfit to deploy (some 17,000 people). Cue panicked headlines and images suggesting that the UK ‘only’ has an Army of 60,000 people amid suggestions that the real Army is somehow smaller than many other countries.

The MOD maintains a highly effective system of monitoring the physical health of the armed forces, recording their overall medical condition and health, ensuring that they are employed in an appropriate manner. The normal health classification is known as ‘P2’ (e.g. fit for duties worldwide in all respects). P3 means that an individual may be limited in their ability to deploy, and that a risk assessment is required before each operational deployment to ensure it is appropriate to do so. There are a smaller number of classifications (P0,4,7,8) which render an individual medically not deployable. A good guide to the system can be found HERE

It is important to understand that these states can, and do, change very quickly. An individual may be P3 for years, break a leg and then be medically non-deployable for some time, while others may sustain a short-term injury which necessitates not doing certain tasks (e.g. not running on injured ankles). It is entirely possible for people to move between states on a regular basis depending on their personal situation.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

In an organisation full of fit healthy people who are engaged in robust physical activity, it is inevitable that minor injuries often happen. It is also important to recognise this and ensure that you don’t employ someone on jobs that are making the injury worse. The P3 status is a useful way of capturing short term issues that ensure people don’t damage their recovery or make the injury worse by just ‘cracking on’.

It is not the case that 17000 soldiers are currently lying in hospital beds at deaths door and unable to deploy at any point. The overwhelming number of these people will hold this status for a very short period – either to recover, or to get treatment or even to just secure the paperwork to confirm their situation. Once this is sorted they will revert to P2 and be deployable again. It is also entirely possible to be deployed and temporarily reduce to P3 if a short term injury occurs but which doesn’t prevent someone from doing their job.

From a management perspective these categories provide a useful planning tool to ensure that units are aware of the medical state of their manpower and know what the unit is capable of. A unit with 100 soldiers may find that 15 of them are classed as P3, technically on restricted duties, but, this may cover a range of ailments from needing dental treatment to recovering from minor surgery.

Prior to deploying them on an operation, a medical risk assessment is required which will ensure their planned activity is appropriate and won’t break them. It may be the case that someone cannot be used on major physically intense exercises, or someone else may not be able to swim. It is about applying common sense and not breaking the assets you’ve got.

The days of people turning a blind eye to injuries or treating people like disposable assets, easily replaceable if broken are long gone. There is a much better understanding within military culture that injuries do occur and need to be treated properly – forcing someone with a major knee injury onto a run could do lifelong damage and leave the MOD with an expensive compensation bill. The advantage of the P3 status is that it ensures people should not be exposed to unnecessary risks to recovery during peacetime, but still ensures that they are able to do the clear majority of the job expected of them.  

It is far better to adopt the British approach of having an honest assessment of troops current fitness and employing them properly than just ‘soldiering on’. The latter may be seen as more ‘manly’ but is an easy way to break people without good reason.

The most expensive asset in the modern armed forces is their manpower. It takes years to train people to the right level and writing someone off permanently due to not taking their injuries seriously is utterly senseless. The MOD has invested heavily in better equipment and training to reduce injuries and help educate people about how to train properly.

 One of the good news stories of recent years is the way a ‘risk aware’ not ‘risk averse’ culture has developed, ensuring people are not injured unnecessarily and that they are employed appropriately.Similarly, the MOD has an exceptionally capable medical system able to support rehabilitation and treatment. The investment in this area is to be welcomed as a way of helping to keep personnel in the Armed Forces who would otherwise have to be medically discharged.

How it used to be done...

It is inevitable that people will injure themselves – it happens in all walks of life. More importantly it happens to all armed forces across the world too. The near hysteria with which the Daily Mail knocked up a table listing various armies manpower totals, then suggesting that somehow the UK only has 60,000 soldiers was utterly disingenuous. Every army has soldiers with injuries – it’s an inevitable part of life in the armed forces.  To imply that the UK is the only army in the world with injured soldiers is borderline ‘fake news’.

What matters is not the number of people in a short term medical category that places a small number of limitations on their activities, but the way they are treated. Ensuring people are given the space to recover, and are treated as having genuine needs, and not malingerers is essential. A failure to help recovery in the short term runs the risk of creating ever worse injuries that could lead to a medical discharge and the loss of experienced personnel for easily avoidable reasons.

The UK is not materially in more danger because Private Bloggs has a minor ankle sprain and should go running, nor is our standing in the world threatened because Colonel Smythe is recovering from day surgery and should avoid excessive fitness for a few weeks. The armed forces do not consist of superhumans able to do any task asked of them. Their demography is the same as the rest of society, and as people age so too do they get unwell and injure themselves. To suggest though that the UK is in peril is way off the mark – injury is a fact of life in every army. The UK is well placed to ensure that the path to recovery is smooth and that soldiers can quickly be returned to their full duties without long term consequences.

This is not the mark of a weakened army, it is instead the sign of a sensible management culture that invests in its people properly to avoid breaking them without good reason.