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Following a fair and appropriate procedure before dismissing an employee is vitally important. The procedures for ill health dismissals are very different from those for absenteeism cases.
A study was performed in the "Belgrade Wool Co." as a retrospective epidemiological investigation, for a three-year period (1985-1987), on a sample of 134 blue-collar female workers. The following statistically significant facts were established: in favourable working conditions (sewing department) the older workers (above the age of 35 years) were absent from work because of illness longer than the younger workers; the number of the younger workers (age 35 years or under) with sick absences increased as working conditions worsened (wool-mills compared to sewing departments). Respiratory diseases made the most frequent cause of absence from work. Harder working conditions influenced the morbidity structure as cause of absenteeism resulting in the rise of prevalence of mental disorders among the younger workers, and of locomotor and circulatory diseases among the older ones. The younger workers showed a rising trend in the severity and frequency of injuries as causes of absence from work, which correlated with the degree of deterioration of working conditions. Finally, under extremely hard working conditions (wool-mills) the rate of occupationally induced injuries among the younger workers was as much as three times higher than among the older ones, and the duration of sick absences was longer.
Statistics on sickness absenteeism are very scanty in Nigeria. This paper describes a case study of the Ibadan Polytechnic workers. The result has shown that the prevalence rate is roughly 25% per annum and the frequency of sickness absence is highest among junior workers, females and the unmarried group. Frequent illnesses are infections and parasitic diseases, with malaria fever being the commonest. The duration of sickness absence was found to be, on average, 3 days, and the implications of the findings on the management and economic climate of the institution are discussed.
Absenteeism is a very costly problem in business and industry. The author discusses the dimensions of the problem, its causes and complexity, and practical steps that occupational health professionals can take to assist management in improving the problem.
The authors have made a research on the influence of mailing letters on keeping up the returns in an ambulatory of health care service. The purpose of the paper was to seek a way to improve the return rate, which is usually low, and brings up difficulties to structure adequately a staff. One hundred children who had failed to come to their last appointment were studied and divided in two groups: 50 children to whose responsible were sent letters setting up a new appointment were included in group I; group II served as a control group. Out of the 97 absentees, 36 children (37.1%) returned. Their return was spontaneous in 22 cases (22.7%)--12 children of group I and 10 of group II. 14 mothers returned on the date set up by mail. Out of the 47 mailed letters, 20 (42.5%) were sent back by the post office. The authors have concluded that mailing letters was an effective method to decrease the number of children who miss their follow-up in ambulatory of health care service.
Residential institutions have historically had problems attracting and retaining reliable unskilled personnel to fill technician-level positions. Even though there is little empirical evidence to support a relationship between staff stability and resident habilitation, there assuredly are such effects. A first step toward assessing these effects, and toward controlling costly technician withdrawal behavior (specifically, turnover and absenteeism), is the use of a common set of measures. The precipitants of employee withdrawal may be categorized into three areas that are subject to empirical investigation and intervention: extra-institutional factors, intra-institutional management, and factors surrounding the individual worker. Predictive research, for selection purposes, has not yielded much information that would be of use to administrators. Traditional and more recent explanations were reviewed and some direction suggested for further research.
Health evaluation interviews and referrals are proving to be useful tools in managing occupational stressors. As illness absenteeism is reduced, the cost-effectiveness of this new prevention program becomes evident. Health evaluations incorporated as part of the medical examination result in the following benefits: Employees are provided with opportunities to assess their own needs in developing adequate coping skills. Employees are encouraged to take responsibility for managing work and/or personal stressors. Employees are directed to appropriate referral resources. Data are provided regarding occupational stressors, employee behavior and attitudes for the development of a comprehensive career stress management program.
The results are reported of a survey on the influenza phenomenon made on a sampling of about 100,000 subjects from the FIAT working community. The study is based on the absenteeism information for both over and under three days absence, for the time period between October 1976 and April 1977. In addition, a tentative evaluation of the influenza phenomenon has been made not only for the overall working population but also for various age groups.
An organizational dynamics paradigm is examined for effectiveness in predicting absenteeism among staff RNs in four hospitals. Different predictor variables were important within each hospital. Discussion is focused on the manager role and organizational policies related to criteria for excessive absence, incentives for attendance, and deterrents to absence.
The relation between exercise and absenteeism due to illness and injury was assessed in 21,924 male workers. Exercisers I (engaging in exercise less than once a week), II (once or twice a week), and III (more than three times a week) had a significantly lower incidence of absence than nonexercisers. The proportion of cases of absence in exercisers I, II, and III was 10%, 10%, and 14% lower, respectively, than that of nonexercisers. The number of days absent among exercisers I, II, and III was 48%, 43%, and 26% lower, respectively, than among nonexercisers. Controlling for confounding factors by logistic analysis, significantly reduced relative risk of absence persisted among exercisers I, II, and III versus nonexercisers at 0.88, 0.90, and 0.87, respectively. These findings indicate that worker exercise was associated with absence due to illness and injury.
Data of the Quality of Life Surveys 1990-1993 (n = 9969) were used to examine if and to what extent elderly workers differ from younger workers with regard to perceptions of the quality of work, especially the workload, and to the percentage absence due to sickness. Adjusted for occupational level, educational level and sex, persons aged 60-64 were characterised by either a substantially lower or a similarly perceived workload as compared to those aged 55-59. Subsequently, adjusted for the occupational level, educational level, sex and perceived workload, a substantial lower rate of absenteeism was found for persons aged 60-64. To a certain extent comparable results were found in the comparison of persons aged 55-59 with those aged 45-54. Based on the low grade of job participation of the elderly, it is proposed that these favourable figures support the notion of an age-related healthy-worker selection in the Netherlands.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the rate of absenteeism from work in patients who had undergone open or arthroscopic acromioplasty. DESIGN: A retrospective case series. SETTING: A university hospital. PATIENTS: Eighteen patients with excellent results after open acromioplasty performed by one orthopedic surgeon and 20 patients with excellent results after arthroscopic acromioplasty performed by another orthopedic surgeon. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The time between operation and return to work. RESULTS: There were no statistical differences between the two techniques with respect to the return to work, age, sex and type of work. The overall time off work averaged 203 days (range from 42 to 840 days) for the arthroscopic group compared with 144 days (range from 60 to 540 days) for the open group. CONCLUSIONS: Open acromioplasty, a safe and reliable procedure for the general orthopedic surgeon, is associated with a shorter, thought not significant, delay in return to work than the arthroscopic technique.
OBJECTIVES: To find whether the variables age, gender, speciality, training and type of contract of primary care doctors, as well as the size of their patient lists and the sort of centre where they work, affect their absenteeism, as measured by time off work sick. DESIGN: An observational, crossover study. SETTING: Nou Barris, sub-division of Barcelona City, primary care (PC) district during 1994. PARTICIPANTS: Doctors. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: In the PC district there were 121 doctors, counting PC teams (PC), traditional system (TS) and specialists. Bivariant epidemiological and statistical techniques were used to verify the relationships between variables. Alpha risk was 5%. 40% of the District's doctors had some time off sick during the year. There were 79 occasions of time off (74 were for short-term sickness and 5 for maternity). Total days lost were 2,477, an average of 31.35. Time off work was related to the age of the doctors and the number of patients attending. Centres where the reform had been implemented had very few cases of time off. CONCLUSIONS: Cases of time off work for sickness among primary care doctors are mainly concentrated in the non-reformed network. It would be useful to study ways of increasing these doctors' motivation.
The author studied absenteeism rates of the nursing personnel in five hospitals, two publics and three privates, all with more than a hundred beds, in the city of Belo Horizonte. In addition she studied the relationship between sickness and injustified absences.
It is observed that the working activity period has recently been decreasing in Poland; this applies to both the male and female populations. Since women constitute 48% of all workers employed in the national economy, this tendency may pose an important problem for the community and public health. The main information source for the absenteeism analysis are medical certificates which in Poland obligatorily document every instance of a sick-leave from work, irrespective of the length of sickness. A 15% random sample of all sickness certificates constitutes a database for the monitoring system of sickness absence. The lost time rate is the main parameter analysed by the system. In 1994 the rate of female sickness absence in Poland amounted to 25.1 days per one employee. In Poland the main causes of female sickness absence are: respiratory diseases--18% of all sickness absence (in the 16-19 age group--49%), and disorders of female genital tract and complications of pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium (17% of all sickness absence and 48% in the 20-29 age group). The most important chronic diseases that substantially contribute to the level of sickness absence include: musculoskeletal diseases (15%), diseases of the circulatory system (15%) and the nervous system and sense organs (11%). Over the period of 1990-1994 the highest rate of the female sickness absence related to gynecological diseases and pregnancy complications (mean annual increase--22%), and the musculoskeletal diseases (mean annual increase--10%).
Absence due to sickness of 25 chronic alcoholics in a Swiss Federal company was compared with that of 75 control subjects parallelized as far as possible. Only those alcoholics were studied who worked in the company throughout the observation period (1966-1975) and whose records with the Federal Medical Service bore the diagnosis "chronic alcoholism". Through shortterm absences (up to 3 days) the alcoholics lost 1.7 days annually compared with 0.9 days for the control group. The average number of shortterm absences among the alcoholics was 0.8 and 0.4 in the control group. Through absences due to illness or accidents (absences of more than 3 days) the alcholics lost 22.3 days annually compared with 7.0 days for controls. The average number of longterm absences was 0.7 for alcoholics and 0.4 for controls. The average cost of absenteeism was 3193.10 Swiss francs for the alcholics and 790.80 Swiss francs for each member of the control group. First notification of alcohol problems of an employee came from within the company in 80% of cases. Striking features were mainly drinking before and during work and erratic time-keeping. In 88% of cases the treatment was disulfiram cure and supportive psychotherapy in 12%. In the next 3 years 4 alcoholics (30.7%) had further episodes of drinking, while 9 (69.3%) showed no sign of alcohol abuse. 12 alcoholics could not be assessed asfollow-up was too short.
This study investigates the demand-control-support (DCS) model by (a) using a more focused measure of job control, (b) testing for interactive and nonlinear relationships, and (c) further extending the model to the prediction of an objective outcome measure (i.e., company-administrated sickness absence). Hypotheses were tested in a heterogeneous sample of 1,739 employees from a 3-year prospective cohort study called SMASH (Study on Musculoskeletal Disorders, Absenteeism, Stress, and Health). Baseline results showed that a linear additive model was superior for job satisfaction, psychosomatic health complaints, and sickness absence, whereas a curvilinear model was superior for emotional exhaustion and depression. It is concluded that, first, there was no evidence of interactive effects. Second, it seems sensible to pay more attention to curvilinear relationships in future research. Finally, the DCS model was not supported using a more objective outcome measure.
Of 210 multibacillary leprosy patients who were admitted to a trial of two drug regimens, fifty-seven were excluded from efficacy analysis at 120 months for various reasons. Thirty-three of these patients were identified as long absentees. Efforts were made to contact these patients through letters and home visits to assess their clinical and bacteriological status and to find out the reasons for default. Twenty-one patients were thus retrieved. Only one patient was found to be having active disease requiring treatment; the rest were clinically inactive and bacteriologically negative.