Presenteeism and productivity loss among nurses

Abstract

Objectives. Presenteeism is a significant problem among the working force, and nurses are not an exception from these phenomena. The purpose of the study was to determine the productivity loss due to presenteeism from three dimensions and to evaluate the associated factors among nurses. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 309 nurses to evaluate presenteeism using the Stanford presenteeism scale (SPS), the health performance questionnaire (HPQ) and the work productivity short inventory (WPSI). Results. The study found that nurses had a high level of presenteeism using the SPS (21.0 ± 4.3) and the HPQ (80.0 ± 18.2). On both scales, presenteeism was significantly associated with nurses who were older than 32 years, with experience of more than 10 years, having children and specifically having two children. The results of the WPSI showed that the productivity loss of presenteeism per nurse annually was USD 1959 and for all nurses was USD 605,283. Conclusion. Eventually, evaluating the presenteeism level will help policymakers to understand the working conditions and related personal characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• presenteeism
• productivity loss
• nurses
• work performance

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all the nurses who participated in this study. The author is thankful to Dr Ron Ozminkowski, Vice President of Cognitive & Analytics for carefully reviewing the manuscript and gratitude also goes to Najla Al-Ansari for her help in data collection and entry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.