Possible causes of experiencing problems with sick leave questions in telephone nursing

Figures & data

Figure 1. Association between age, frequency of patients asking sick leave questions, and experienced problems with sick leave questions among registered nurses with no education in social insurance medicine, and registered nurses with such education.

Table 1. Characteristics of the study population.

	No problems^a		Problems^b
	n	Mean (SD) or %	n	Mean (SD) or %	P
n	39		75
Age		53.4 (8.3)		46.6 (10.3)	<0.0005
Women, %	39	100.0	73	96.0	n.s.
Has a specialist nurse examination, %	31	79.5	51	68.0	n.s.
Has worked with telephone nursing 6 years or more, %	29	74.4	37	49.3	<0.005
Working in County Council-operated primary health care centre, %	29	74.4	63	84.0	n.s.
Working full time, %	24	61.5	46	61.3	n.s.
Telephone nursing <50% of working hours, %	15	38.5	29	38.7	n.s.
Own sick-listing <7 days during last 5 years, %	15	38.5	42	56.0	n.s.
Workplace policy for handling sick leave	25	67.6	47	42.0	n.s.
Handling sick leave questions is for me no work environmental problem, %	19	48.7	31	41.3	n.s.
Gets no support from managers, %	4	11.4	10	13.5	n.s.
Has a role in health care of sick-listed patients, %	28	71.8	50	67.6	n.s.
Educated in social insurance medicine, %	4	10.3	1	1.4	<0.05
Telephone calls with sick leave questions once a week or more often, %	32	82.0	73	97.3	<0.001

^a No problems = problematic telephone nursing calls less than once a week.

^b Problems = problematic telephone nursing calls once a week or more often.

Table 2. Characteristics of the study population with outcome classified in three groups.

	Problem group 0^a		Problem group 1^b		Problem group 2^c
	n	Mean (SD) or %	n	Mean (SD) or %	n	Mean (SD) or %	P
n	34		61		14
Age		53.6 (8.6)		47.8 (10.0)		41.4 (10.3)	<0.0001
Women, %	34	100.0	61	96.7	14	92.9	n.s.
Has a specialist nurse examination, %	34	85.3	61	72.1	14	50.0	<0.05
Has worked with telephone nursing 6 years or more, %	26	76.5	34	55.7	3	21.4	<0.0001
Working in County Council-operated primary health care centre, %	26	76.5	52	85.3	11	78.6	n.s.
Working full time, %	20	58.8	35	57.4	11	78.6	n.s.
Telephone nursing <50% of working hours, %	13	38.2	26	42.6	3	21.4	n.s.
Own sick-listing >7 days during last 5 years, %	13	38.2	34	55.7	8	57.1	n.s.
Workplace policy for handling sick leave	22	66.7	40	65.6	7	50.0	n.s.
Handling sick leave questions is for me no work environmental problem, %	14	41.2	27	44.3	4	28.6	n.s.
Gets no support from managers, %	4	12.1	8	13.3	2	14.3	n.s.
Has a role in health care of sick-listed patients, %	25	73.5	42	68.9	8	61.5	n.s.
Educated in social insurance medicine, %	3	8.8	1	1.7	0	0	n.s.
Telephone calls with sick leave questions once a week or more often, %	28	82.4	59	96.7	14	100.0	<0.0001

^a Problem group 0 = problematic telephone nursing calls less than onsce a week.

^b Problem group 1 = problematic telephone nursing calls 1–5 times a week.

^c Problem group 2 = problematic telephone nursing calls 6 times a week or more often.

Table 3. Logistic regression of age, telephone nursing experience, and social insurance medicine education on frequency of sick leave problems.

Parameter	Estimate (SE)	Wald’s χ	HR	95% CI	P
Age	−0.0670 (0.0241)	7.7	0.94	0.89–0.98	=0.005
Educated in social insurance medicine	−2.4884 (1.2188)	4.2	0.08	0.008–0.91	<0.05
Frequency of sick leave questions	0.9309 (0.3081)	9.1	2.54	1.39–4.64	<0.005