Sick Leaves Pattern in A Tertiary Healthcare Facility in Saudi Arabia
Abstract BACKGROUND : Frequent sick leaves in any healthcare organization is a critical problem that can undermine the patients' care. METHODS : This is a quantitative cross-sectional study looking at the frequency of sick leaves among employees of a large, tertiary healthcare facility in Riyadh. We randomly selected 474 employees, who were seen in family medicine clinics during one-year period. We collected all the data retrospectively from their electronic medical records. Then we reviewed and analyzed all the data using SPSS software. RESULTS : There was no difference in the sick leaves rate between males and females (P-value 0.8618), but we saw a higher rate among younger employees (40 years old or less) compared to those 41 years or older (p-value <0.0001). We also investigated those who took four sick leaves or more during the period of the study, and we found that most of them were mainly nursing staff (31.71%), hospital assistances (24.39%) and housekeepers (14.63%). The commonest cause for taking sick leave in our study was viral upper respiratory tract infection. Therefore, we studied the effect of influenza vaccine on the frequency of sick leaves and we found that those who took the vaccine were less likely to take a leave because of flu (P-value <0.0001, Odd ratio 0.4067 with 95% CI 0.2739-0.608). CONCLUSION : younger employees, nurses, hospital assistants and housekeepers are more likely to take sick leaves. These findings need to be studied further in the future to help us dealing with the problem of absenteeism. Flu is the leading cause for sick leaves and influenza vaccine seemed to reduce its rate. In this study, we also discussed different methods that can be used by any healthcare organization to reduce absence rate.