BACKGROUND A school absenteeism surveillance system was implemented in the province of Quebec, Canada during the second wave of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. This paper compares this surveillance approach with other available indicators. METHOD All (3432) elementary and high schools from Quebec were included. Each school was required to report through a web-based system any day where the proportion...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to analyze the potential association between nursing workload and patient safety in the medical and surgical inpatient units of a teaching hospital. METHOD a mixed method strategy (sequential explanatory design). RESULTS the initial quantitative stage of the study suggest that increases in the number of patients assigned to each nursing team lead to incre...

The prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders is very high among midwives resulting in sickness absenteeism, functional limitation and staff shortages. There are several contributory risk factors having impact on the development MSDs. This study aimed to (1) explore midwives' experiences views about work-related MSDs contributing factors, (2) analyse working postures for injury risks. A mixed met...

OBJECTIVE To test whether an intervention to improve primary care depression management significantly improves productivity at work and absenteeism over 2 years. SETTING AND SUBJECTS Twelve community primary care practices recruiting depressed primary care patients identified in a previsit screening. RESEARCH DESIGN Practices were stratified by depression treatment patterns before randomiza...

PURPOSE Elevated levels of absenteeism have been reported for students receiving special education services, especially students with learning disabilities (LDs) and emotional disturbances (EDs). In contrast, little is known about absenteeism rates associated with students with communication disorders (CDs). METHOD Archival records of student attendance for the 1997-2001 academic years from a...

In health economic evaluation studies, to value productivity loss due to absenteeism, existing methods use wages as a proxy value for marginal productivity. This study is the first to test the equality between wage and marginal productivity losses due to absenteeism separately for team workers and non-team workers. Our estimates are based on linked employer-employee data from Canada. Results in...