Clinicians Work While Sick: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

Environmental Factors: The hospital is a very busy place. The background noise can distract the attention of the physicians while they ponder over the right prescription of a drug. The high demand of a medical profession can be stressful and lead to fatigue. These possible occupational hazards can contribute to medical errors.

It’s also good practice to conduct a return to work interview with anyone who has been absent due to ill health after any period of illness. Employees should be asked to explain any inconsistencies between the reason given for their absence and any observed behaviour. Only if an employee cannot give a satisfactory explanation should disciplinary action being taken.

Patients become frustrated, irritable and angry that they are sick. A common response is,” Why me?”

For example, legislating paid sick days opens the door to abuse by employees. Some employees may use these days as vacation without notifying their employer or a specific reason for their absence. This will often leave employers scrambling to find replacements for absent workers, which can put some small businesses in trouble. Abuse of these paid sick days translates into loss of money for businesses and higher costs for consumers.

The United States health care system is unique among other advanced countries. This system does not have a central governing agency, it is delivered under imperfect market conditions, there are multiple players and payers, and there is no universal health care coverage (Shi & Singh, 2015, p. 9). In a time where healthcare reform is being discussed, it is important for the United States to consider what is proactive as well as what is failing the system. That is what Sick Around The World did; the documentary compared five other countries’ (United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland) healthcare systems to see how they stacked up against the United States.

With Kelly, the tangible factor is the fact that she became ill and appropriately notified her supervisor, then expected and wanted to use sick time, as employee regulations clearly outline. This falls within her norm as she learned in the U.S./Canadian as she received her management degree from the Canadian University.

The one disadvantage her job has is the long hours she has to work to get all the work done. She has to stand on her feet most of the day going from different offices and while doing that it then makes her back and feet hurt. Most of the time she is working from seven to nine and she usually comes home exhausted. Also another disadvantage is having to deal with the patients who do not want to continue their journey onto getting well and choses to just go home. She is the only clinical director at the clinic and has no assistant like most of the clinics so she sometimes can be extremely stressed out. With her sometime being stressed out her boss which is a doctor rewards her of a vacation. During her vacation she relaxes for a week and then return back to

As a result, overtime can compromise patients ' health or safety. Medical residents cited fatigue as a cause for their serious mistakes in four out of 10 cases (Boodman 2001), and two studies linked infection outbreaks at hospitals to overtime work (Arnow et al. 1982; and Russell et al. 1983). Indeed, the California Nurses Association reports that more nurses are refusing to work in hospitals with unsafe conditions, in which they include being forced to work unplanned overtime. The American Nurses Association (ANA), in a national survey of 7,300 of its members, found, disturbingly, that 56% of nurses believe that the time they have available for care for each patient has decreased, and 75% feel that the quality of patient care at their own facility has decreased in the last two years. The cited inadequate staffing as the chief reason.

Another point, I noted that the sick calls remained steady and did not change. In my opinion, there should have been decreased sick calls but the study did not indicate clearly about the reasons for sick calls. Thus couple things come in my mind, did sick calls come from the same staff for the previous years? Did they have social problems or were seasonal sick

There may be some people that would abuse the privilege of having this, and not wanting to offer it. There are still honest people in the world that it could be an advantage to. Many people have families and cannot afford to call-in sick when they have the flu, or another illness. That is where the paid sick leave would come in. Employees coming to work sick could be a bigger risk then not letting them have to day off. It could be difficult for some smaller businesses to offer this because of the costs. The restaurant industry could get hit pretty hard because of the administrative costs as well as having to cover peoples’ shifts that are unable to go to work. “The U.S is the only major industrialized nation without a national paid sick-leave policy Some 145 countries provide paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses. Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Singapore require employers to provide at least 10 paid sick days” (Koba, 2013).

272). Absenteeism is a common problem in the workplace today, and it is a widespread concern in many organizations. Employees call out sick for a variety of reasons, but if it occurs frequently enough it becomes an obvious issue. Some staff members make absenteeism a habit, meaning they call out more than their peers. At this point, absenteeism results in disruptive work processes for other staff members and becomes financially draining to the employer (Sullivan & Decker,

“It is common for the hospital to post schedules with holes in them, meaning that not all the shifts are covered and they are short on nurses from the start. The crisis is predictable and inevitable. These crises are not foreseen or emergency situations, but rather ones that are planned, systemic and programmed for failure. They are not due to “call –ins” that the hospitals like to cite. Even so, there is absolutely no leeway for the event when a nurse does all in sick” (Twarog, 2011, p. 10).

Employers today come up against many obstacles regarding employee productivity. Some of those concerns include health related absenteeism and presenteeism.. Matke and others observed there is a shift in burden to employers due to Americas aging workforce that results in loss of productivity brought on by illness related absenteeism and presenteeism (Matke and others, 2013). A report by Berry, Mirabito, and Baun show that absenteeism and presenteeism account for lost productivity costs that are

Shortage of healthcare workers in US is a well-known phenomenon. With the baby-boomer generation coming to its retirement the acute shortage of talented workforce is a major challenge before the US health care. There are a number of trends in health care that are currently affecting the workforce dynamics. The use of technology in health care has increased over time and increasingly health care organizations are adopting new technologies to make their services better. It is an important trend that has also affected the health care workforce. Increased use of Information Technology in the health care organizations has led to related changes in the composition of the workforce too. But not just this, there are also a number of other

Do not call in sick unless you are, or take for granted that you can call in a vacation day spontaneously. Vacations and personal time should be scheduled. When you are out, your job is delegated to others, and having to take on unexpected responsibilities without being prepared can affect production or productivity, as well cause stress and conflict among others.