Open AccessSick Leave Characteristics Among Nurses of a Referral Hospital During COVID-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Arezoo Najafi,
Khosro Sadeghniiat-Haghighi,
Esmaeil Mohammadnejad,
Seyed Ali Dehghan Manshadi,
Nazanin Izadi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
acta medica iranica.
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.218
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1735-9694
pISSN - 0044-6025
DOI - 10.18502/acta.v59i10.7765
Subject(s) - medicine , sick leave , absenteeism , pandemic , referral , outbreak , family medicine , covid-19 , cross sectional study , health care , nursing , disease , physical therapy , infectious disease (medical specialty) , virology , management , pathology , economic growth , economics
Hospital-related infections have been widely reported during the Covid-19 outbreak that exposes healthcare professionals to at greater risk of infection. This cross-sectional study was designed to evaluate the frequency of absenteeism in hospital staff during the first and second months of the Covid-19 pandemic, from 26 February until 19 April 2020. Occupational data and sickness absenteeism characteristics were collected from the records of the nursing management department. 304 (17.8%) had sick leave due to coronavirus or corona-like symptoms. Nurses and then nursing aid workers constituted the categories with more frequency of sick leave. The more median days of sick leave were observed among supervisors and midwives. About 80% of participants had typical symptoms of Coronavirus. In conclusion, the median days of sick leave due to coronavirus were not as high as we thought. This could be due to human resource shortage and insufficient knowledge regarding return-to-work guidelines in the early phase of this pandemic.