Workload and short sickness absences in a cohort of Finnish hospital employees

Tero Kuusi (), Martti Kulvik, Mikko Härmä and Annina Ropponen
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Tero Kuusi: Etla Economic Research
Martti Kulvik: Etla Economic Research
Mikko Härmä: The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
Annina Ropponen: The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health

The European Journal of Health Economics, 2025, vol. 26, issue 2, No 4, 199-222

Abstract: Abstract This article used register data on day-to-day working hours of hospital employees combined with patient characteristics at work unit (wards) level to measure workload and its implications for short, self-certified sickness absences. We measured statistically the average nursing treatment burden of different patient mixes in hospital wards, and then analyzed the overall workload (intensity) of working days by comparing it to the actual available nursing workforce. We found that a significant part of the workload variation occurred between working days, and it was related to unexpected changes in the number of employees. In atypical situations a long work shift was associated with caring for patients with fewer resources. The high workload of a day increased the risk of short sickness absences along the following 3-week period. The results show that managing short-term workload variability should be a key aim from the perspective of well-being at work, and that combining different data sources can provide novel, important insights to the measurement of workload.

Keywords: Health care; Workload; Efficiency; Working time features; Occupational health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 J28 J45 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10198-024-01698-8

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