Survey effective personal and familial factors on absenteeism in nursing ‎professionals at educational – therapeutic centers in Rasht in ‎‏2007-2008‏

Introduction:&lrm;&rlm; &rlm;Absenteeism is a side effect of personnel problems. Researches in different societies show nursing professionals experience high level of sickness absence in &lrm;comparison with other occupational professionals. Absenteeism adversely affects patient care &lrm;both directly and indirectly and nurses also as members of health care systems suffer from it. &lrm; &nbsp;Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the effective personal and familial &lrm;factors on absenteeism in nursing professionals at educational &ndash; therapeutic centers in Rasht.&lrm; Methods: In this cross &ndash; sectional and descriptive study, &lrm;&rlm;600&rlm;&lrm; nursing professionals were &lrm;studied. A self &ndash; administered questionnaire survey method was used to collect data and it &lrm;was analyzed with SPSS &lrm;&rlm;11.5&rlm;&lrm;, chi square and exact fisher test.&lrm; Results: Analyses revealed that &lrm;&rlm;78.8&rlm;&lrm; % of nursing professionals were not absent in the last &lrm;&rlm;6&rlm;&lrm; &lrm;months. In addition &lrm;&rlm;71%&rlm;&lrm; of all absences were &lrm;&rlm;1-3&rlm;&lrm; days (short &ndash; term). The main cause of &lrm;absence was illness (&lrm;&rlm;69.4%&rlm;&lrm;) and back pain had the highest rate (&lrm;&rlm;33.9%&rlm;&lrm;) among who were &lrm;absent in the last &lrm;&rlm;6&rlm;&lrm; months. Double booked with another facility were associated with short &lrm;term absence (p<&lrm;&rlm;0.05&rlm;&lrm;) but none of other factors associated with absence. &lrm; Conclusion: These results suggest that nurse managers should recognize the factors that cause &lrm;nurses to work in double facilities that can be related to financial demands or staffing status &lrm;of nurses. Also because the main cause of absence was illness they should plan for promotion &lrm;of nurses' health. &lrm;