SERVANTS LEAVES DUE TO ILLNESS IN A PUBLIC HOSPITAL: A STUDY ON THE CAUSES
worker's health; absenteeism; sick leave.; public hospital; work management
Hospitals are complex organizations that offer medium and high complexity health services. The professionals who work in this service live daily with work overload, lack of personnel, long shifts, shortage of inputs and equipment, inadequate physical structures, insufficient beds, overcrowding, wage gap, fragility in relationships, among others. This research aims to know the profile of leaves due to illness among employees of a public hospital in the State of Alagoas. This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach. The target population consisted of all hospital workers who, from May 2020 to December 2021, had leave due to illness registered in the Cadastral Information System of the General Hospital of the State of Alagoas/HGE, which have sociodemographic, clinical and occupational information of workers. The HGE is the largest public hospital in the state, a gateway to urgency and emergency type III. Data were tabulated in Excel software and analyzed via JASP 0.16.4 (JASP TEAM, 2023). Inferential tests were performed to investigate the association between the number of leaves per ICD-10 group, using the Kruskal-Walis test. The χ² test was performed, with a significance level of 5% (p < 0.05), when cells had a number of observations lower than 5, Fisher's exact test was used. The results showed a high number of absences due to illness among health workers at the institution, more frequently in the nursing category and among non-permanent workers. With regard to diseases, those of the musculoskeletal system were more frequent. Knowing the causes of absenteeism due to illness associated with health workers provides subsidies to establish prevention and health promotion strategies at work. It is believed that the health of these workers is neglected, which is also reflected in the quality of care provided to the patient. Knowing the profile of the worker's illness is essential, since it allows the situational diagnosis, contributes to the recognition of risk factors and helps in intervention strategies aimed at improving working conditions, quality of life and reducing work leave.