Factors Related to Absenteeism among Nurses in Health Care Sector

Abstract

Absenteeism is defined as the absence of employees from work. Nursing is considered a largest department of medical institutions because nursing staff comprises 40–60% of total human resources working in hospitals and their absenteeism cause shortage of nurses which has direct effect on patient care and on the productivity of an organization. Nurse's absenteeism is a global issue because this worsens the existing shortage of nurses. In Punjab Institutions of Cardiology nurses were faced with challenges like poor working conditions as well as physical exhaustion from the workload. These are the factors that contributing to nurse absenteeism in PIC Lahore. Determine the factor of absenteeism among nurses of Punjab Institute of Cardiology. Descriptive cross-sectional study design used to determine the factors of absenteeism among nurses. The study was carried out in PIC Lahore. Sample size was 187 which draw from target population 350 nurses working in PIC Lahore. Participants were selected by simple random sampling technique. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The results show that 70.29% participants agreed that they being absent from work place due to workload because they have enough work at clinical site and they also perform duty in their absent colleague. The study findings show that 67.5% participants agreed that physical working conditions like excessive light, temperature, noise, and overcrowding, working environment were not favorable for them and they consider it contributing factor of their absenteeism. Absenteeism has become a major challenge for health care organizations. The study concludes and recommends that the physical working conditions of the hospital need to be improved for the accommodation of employees' basic needs and the management should maintain staff patient ratio because it put pressure on nurses as excessive workload and this leads to absenteeism among nurses.