ARLINGTON, Virginia — Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals are known to be hard workers, but a new study shows that it would be best if they took a chill pill when sickness strikes.
According to the recent survey, about four in 10 healthcare providers experiencing flu-like symptoms will still show up for work. While coming into work sick always risks the spread of bacteria and potential disease, it’s an especially serious issue for those working in healthcare facilities where there are concentrations of older patients and people with immunity issues.
“The statistics are alarming. At least one earlier study has shown that patients who are exposed to a healthcare worker who is sick are five times more likely to get a healthcare-associated infection,” says study author Dr. Sophia Chiu in a press release. “We recommend all healthcare facilities take steps to support and encourage their staff to not work while they are sick.”
A researcher at the Center for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Chiu, along with several colleagues, looked at data collected from nearly 2,000 healthcare professionals during the 2014-2015 influenza season. They found that of the various physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers polled, 414 reported having flu-like symptoms that year.
Out of those 414, more than 40 percent (183) came into work for multiple days while experiencing symptoms.
At hospitals, the statistics were even worse — with nearly 50 percent of workers experiencing flu-like symptoms coming into work anyway.
Pharmacists and physicians were the worst offenders, coming in while sick more frequently than other healthcare workers.
“It has long been known that doctors make the worst patients,” writes Dr. Danielle Ofri, explaining the phenomenon in a 2013 New York York Times piece. “From day one in medical training, the unspoken message is that calling in sick is for wimps.”
Going on to enumerate the laundry list of inconveniences to colleagues and patients that occur when a doctor calls in sick, Ofri eventually concludes that the culture needs to change and doctors need to learn to take sick leave despite the inconvenience.
In this new survey, healthcare professionals also reported not taking sick days because of feelings of professional obligation to coworkers and difficulty finding colleagues to cover for them.
Standing in contrast to these reasons, which were most common to hospitals, healthcare professionals at long term care facilities instead often reported they came in while sick because they couldn’t afford to take the time off.
The overall results of the survey — indicating that healthcare workers don’t take sick days when they should — matches data from other earlier surveys, including a 2015 study that found more than 83 percent of the 536 healthcare workers in that survey had worked while sick in the past year.
“Attending physicians and (advanced practice clinicians) frequently work while sick despite recognizing that this choice puts patients at risk,” those authors wrote. “The decision to work sick is shaped by systems-level and sociocultural factors. Multimodal interventions are needed to reduce the frequency of this behavior.”
The authors of the latest study made similar conclusions, writing that to reduce influenza transmission, healthcare professionals need to change their misconceptions about working while ill and institutions need to “consider the influence of paid sick leave policies.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone with flu-like symptoms wait 24-hours after a fever breaks before returning to work.
The survey comes on the heels of other recent research looking at the role of healthcare professionals in spreading disease, including one study finding that MRSA and other contaminants are frequently carried on scrubs.
The survey findings were published in the November issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC).
I was told once by a Hospital Administrator ” A Doctor calling sick is like a mechanic calling to say he can’t come in because his car is broke!”
Needless to say, this pinhead drove his hospital into the ground and bankruptcy
I asked My Doctor,
Did you ever really think about what you would be doing, After Eight Years of Study, In Real Life?
Was it? Hanging around SICK PEOPLE EVERYDAY.
She Looked at Me – kind of in Shock?
Let Her Know.
We are All Humans,
We were Born without roots planted in the ground, so If we choose to Move, We can do so Freely.
Within a Month, She Quit & Moved to Florida.
I guess, I gave Her the Red Pill in Life.
She Said Thanks, I have made enough Money, I need to Live My own Life.
Good Luck Doc, Wish You Luck & Happiness.
going to medical school is a sacrifice, and that means sacrificing one’s health at times for others.
+It means sacrificing your youth, your innocence, your family and your own life as well
sorry. we have to work. can’t call a substitute doctor and see patients booked from 830-530pm. canceling 25-30 patients who are sick also. someone has to sacrifice. some of us carry our IV pole while working. be glad your doctor is dedicated enough to you to show up under the weather.
It would also be good if they did not perform surgeries when they are taking opioids.
Well these are the over taxed 10% who provide the fuel to our economy. It’s inherent in their work ethic that they “play hurt”. America would be in a better spot if more citizens adopted this mindset.
I have worked when I had the flu and had an IV pole I was dragging around. A friend of mine worked with gallstone pancreatitis and an IV pole, another while they were in congestive heart failure. All docs.
No one to replace them for the shift.
No sick days at my hospital. If I don’t show I don’t get paid.
That is a TRUTH of a Real Job – Plus if you are sick You can just say Doctor… Doctor.
This is not the choice of the healthcare worker, the bottom line is this is still a JOB, one they get fired from for not showing up to work like anyone else.
You have to look at different factors when making sense of raw data, one of the problems with “studies” in addition to many of them being concocted by editorial staffs for political reasons.
40% of all of us work when sick. It’s called life. Maybe the statisticians doing these studies should get real jobs and quit wasting our tax dollars.
Yeah, I would lay some money that Dr. Sophia is a Ph.D. or else is an MD with an office job and very limited clinical experience.
Take a chill pill? How insulting. You ever hear of “progressive supervision”? Does your work punish you for calling out sick? What makes you think health care workers have it different. When they are sick you want them to not come to work, when they don’t come to work they are too sick to come in, when they don’t come in you want them to get a doctors note, to get a doctors note they haft to go into where they work even though they are too sick.
When there are a total of 3 surgeons staffing a hospital with 200beds… can one of them take a day off for a cold? The answer is NO.
No. The surgeon can just infect the patients You’re either stupid or these corporate docs are. Remember, FIRST, DO NO HARM? Nope, I guess not.
“thou shall not cut, even for a stone. That shall be left to the monsters that do that sort of thing”… the oath is more than the one little line you know. Surgeons were intentionally left out. Anyways, you don’t know shiza, clearly. You’d rather have a sick pilot landing the plane than a well cab driver.
As the line from the movie ‘Matrix’ goes, “Welcome to the real world.”
“Doctor’s Scrub, Cover & Are Gloved before touching You”
.
You never Have done Surgery on anyone for thirteen Hours, take a 15 Minute Break and Help another – – Get a Real life…. Judge Not – what You Do Not Know Of.
it’s call a mask and wash your hands.