Prevalence and Causes of Medical Absenteeism Among Staff (Case Study at Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences: 2009-2010)

INTRODUCTION: Work absenteeism is a significant issue and can be observed in terms of human resources management. Given the importance of staff practices, which are anticipated in every organization, the role of each employee in this system and the implications of their absence as well as the importance of recovery time rest in fast recovery of staff and anticipated costs for their lost work days, thus this study is aimed to determine the extent and causes of medical absenteeism (sickness absence) of head staff of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. METHODS AND MATERIALS: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted using medical absenteeism (sickness absence) persons happened in 2010. Research population was included all records of staff working in central departments of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. There was no sampling due to the importance of the issue. Studied variables were included age, gender, employment status, employees’ education, name of the disease, physician specialty in issuing the medical absence paper, leave issuing reference and department, position of the employee, number of absence days, number of absences, number of annual leave days. Also, data were gathered using a checklist, then were entered into the SPSS software and got analyzed using descriptive statistics. In order to respect the confidentiality, name of the doctors and employees weren’t mentioned publicly. RESULTS: Based on the results, 1200 employees were leaved the organization due to the sickness issue, which 957 (79.7%) of them were studied. The mean age for those employees was 39±7. Also, total average sick leave days and total sick leave days were 2±1 and 2571, respectively. 40.8 % ( 390 employees) were male and the rest were female. Moreover, 18.3% of sick leaves were issued for singles and the remained were for married employees. Regarding the employees’ education, 2% under diploma, 11.3% diploma, 7.8% upper diploma, 47.6% B.Sc., 14.6% MS.c and 15.85 had doctorate degree. Considering their position, 65%, 30.3%, 2.5% and 1.8% were experts, others, heads, and mangers, respectively. Furthermore, their employment status indicated that 62.3%, 18.1%, 16.8% and 2.8% of employees were employed in form of formal, short-term contract, long-term contract and other forms, respectively. Among the aspiratory diseases, 115 persons had got cold and 97 were infected to flu. The prevalence of other diseases was as follows: neck and back pain among the skeletal diseases (118 persons), fever and headache among the signs (71 persons) and diarrhea and vomiting among the infectious diseases (88 persons). CONCLUSION: According to the study results, due to the nature of staff work, physical problems, which are caused by doing mental works as well as low mobility, are rising among the employees. Of course, practicing ergonomic considerations, devoting hours in form of exercise break for staff can be effective in this regard. In order to address other diseases, vaster researches are needed with a concentration on exact reasons of work absenteeism.