| Summary: | The health service in Norway employs nine percent of the working population. This means that 286,000 people work in the health and caring sector; of that, a total 84 percent are women. In the last three months of 2012, medically prescribed sick leave was 8.6 percent for women and 5 percent for men. The objective of the systematic review was to synthesise research into the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent sick leave and disability retirement for employees in the health and caring services. We have included twelve randomised controlled trials with a total of more than 2000 participants where the studies reported sick leave as an outcome. The research evidence shows that:1. It is uncertain if either physical fitness training or integrated emotion-oriented care is effective in reducing sick leave for emloyees working in nursing or caring homes2. Influenza vaccination may make little or no difference on sick leave among employees in hospitals3. It is uncertain if physical fitness training alone, physical fitness in combination with transfer technique, physical fitness and back belts, incremental supportive schemes for sick leave, cognitive behavioural therapy or process consultation are effective in reducing sick leave among employees in hospitals. None of the studies reported disability retirement as an outcome. In general, the results from the included studies did not show any statistically significant difference between the differing interventions. One should however, be careful in making the assumption that no documentation of difference equates to documenting that there is no difference. Most of the studies had few participants and large variations
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