Participants believed HCWs' health to be perceived of low importance by themselves, peers and employers, resulting in little sympathy towards their own health needs. It emerged that they often experienced anxiety when reporting absence from work with an illness and described common feelings of scepticism and distrust between themselves and line managers. Consequently, they were reluctant to stay at home with mild symptoms and even felt they were expected to come to work under such conditions to relieve managers from staffing pressures as, at times, managers were required to cover these shifts themselves. They felt they lacked understanding concerning the relationship between severity of symptoms and infectiousness and at which point they may pose a risk to others. The participants commented on the varying illness behaviour patterns and absence reporting practices across professions with doctors being those most likely to attend work with infectious disease symptoms (appendix 3). They stated that only severe symptoms such as high fever and acute pain would encourage higher level staff to be absent and highlighted a lack of clear guidelines for symptomatic staff in the work place. In addition, in Hungary, staff sick leave entitlements amount to less than their actual pay, further motivating HCWs to come to work when unwell or take sick leave as annual leave. Participants' statements on their perceptions of illness and sickness-related absence are presented in appendix 3.