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[Factors conditioning absenteeism among primary care physicians]
C Nebot Adell1, N Juvanet Ribot, J Canela Soler
1Dirección de Atención Primaria Nou Barris, Subdivisión de Atención Primaria de Barcelona ciudad, ICS.
Objectives:
To find whether the variables age, gender, speciality, training and type of contract of primary care doctors, as well as the size of their patient lists and the sort of centre where they work, affect their absenteeism, as measured by time off work sick.
Design:
An observational, crossover study.
Setting:
Nou Barris, sub-division of Barcelona City, primary care (PC) district during 1994.
Participants:
Doctors.
Measurements And Main Results:
In the PC district there were 121 doctors, counting PC teams (PC), traditional system (TS) and specialists. Bivariant epidemiological and statistical techniques were used to verify the relationships between variables. Alpha risk was 5%. 40% of the District's doctors had some time off sick during the year. There were 79 occasions of time off (74 were for short-term sickness and 5 for maternity). Total days lost were 2,477, an average of 31.35. Time off work was related to the age of the doctors and the number of patients attending. Centres where the reform had been implemented had very few cases of time off.
Conclusions:
Cases of time off work for sickness among primary care doctors are mainly concentrated in the non-reformed network. It would be useful to study ways of increasing these doctors' motivation.