Sick leave characteristics among nurses of a referral hospital during COVID-19 epidemic

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 Covi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Arezoo Najafi, khosro sadeghniiat haghighi, Esmaeil Mohammadnejad, Seyed Ali Dehghan Manshadi, Nazanin Izadi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2021-11-01
Series:Acta Medica Iranica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://acta.tums.ac.ir/index.php/acta/article/view/9082
Description
Summary: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 epidemic, 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 epidemic
ISSN:0044-6025
1735-9694