Abstract
Several studies showed that sickness absenteeism has considerable impact on civil service given the increasing number of sick leaves granted to and days off work among employees. Health care workers, especially those in hospitals, represent one of the occupational groups at higher risk of absenteeism. Therefore, establishing the pattern of sickness absenteeism in this group is crucial to implement efficacious preventive measures against work-related diseases. To characterize sickness absenteeism among the nursing and medical staff of a public hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, in the period from 2011 through 2013. Cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in a large hospital in which we analyzed data from January 2011 to December 2013. Employees missed a total of 71,460 days of work along the analyzed period; 3,323 sick leave benefits were granted to 1,533 workers. Nursing assistants and workers in the adult emergency department accounted for the largest number of days off work to a total of 11,460. The most common reasons for sick leaves among emergency department employees were musculoskeletal diseases and mental and behavioral disorders. We detected changes in the morbidity profile of the nursing and medical staff along the analyzed period, characterized by conditions which demand longer time for recovery and return to work.
Highlights
Absenteeism is the term used to designate the total number of unplanned days off work[1]
Analysis of the Safety and Occupational Medicine Department (SOMD) data showed a slight decrease of the employee population along the analyzed years
The human resources department (HRD) data evidenced that most employees were within age range 31 to 59 years old (93.07%), mean 45 and had worked
Summary
Absenteeism is the term used to designate the total number of unplanned days off work[1]. When absences are due to disease or some other health problem, the term used is sickness absenteeism, a condition that requires due attention from employers and social security systems[2] This is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon within occupational health inasmuch as it involves interactions among several occupational factors with direct influence on health and safety[3,4]. Most studies of morbidity among workers in Brazil are based on social security data, which as a rule do not consider civil servants[7,8] As concerns the latter, mostly those in the health and education sectors have called the attention of investigators[9,10,11]
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