Managing sick leave in Europe

Background: Sick leave of salaried workers is an important economic and public health problem in many European countries. A working group of 20 experts from ten European countries introduced an international exchange concerning this issue. The latest milestone in this project was a meeting in Berlin on the 12th of March 2010 where key questions were extracted. Method The project is mainly based on a structured exchange of information between the participants and a problem-oriented view on the different systems. The first step was to provide information of each nation about the function of professionals who are i…