The vast majority of doctors and other trained medical professionals at a hospital went to work while sick within the past year, even though they realized the risk that decision places on patients, according to a recent study.
In fact, almost 1 in 10 hospital clinicians worked while sick at least five times in the past year, primarily because of staffing concerns or not wanting to let colleagues down, reported Julia Szymczak, Ph.D., and her associates at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (JAMA Pediatr. 2015 July 6 [doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0684]).
“A combination of closed- and open-ended questions illustrated that the decision to work while sick was shaped by systems-level and sociocultural factors that interacted to cause our respondents to work while symptomatic, despite recognizing that this choice may put patients and colleagues at risk,” the authors wrote.
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Of 929 surveys sent out, 538 clinicians completed them, which included 280 of 459 physicians (61%) and 256 of 470 advanced-practice clinicians (54.5%). The advanced-practice clinicians included registered nurses, physician assistants, clinical nurse specialists, registered nurse anesthetists, and certified nurse midwives. Of those who responded, 15.7% worked in intensive care, 13.1% in surgery, 12.5% in general pediatrics, and 44.8% in another pediatric subspecialty.
Although 95.3% of respondents believed working while sick put patients at risk, 83.1% reported having done so at least once in the past year. Further, that proportion included 52% of all respondents who reported coming to work sick twice in the past year and 9.3% who worked while ill at least five times in the past year.
Nearly a third of respondents said they would work even if they had diarrhea (30%), while 16% said they would work with a fever, and 55.6% would work with acute respiratory symptoms, including cough, congestion, rhinorrhea, and sore throat.
But doctors were more likely than other professionals to say they would go to work with these symptoms: 38.9% of doctors would work despite diarrhea, compared with 19.9% of advanced-practice clinicians. Doctors and advanced-practice clinicians would also work with acute respiratory symptoms (60% vs. 50.8%, respectively), a fever only (21.8% vs. 9.8%), and fever and chills with body aches (18.6% vs. 10.9%, all P < .03).
Nearly every respondent (98.7%) said they worked despite being sick because they did not want to let their colleagues down, just as almost all of them worried the hospital would not have enough staff (94.9%) or that they would let their patients down (92.5%).
Smaller majorities of respondents also worked because others also work while sick (65%), worried their colleagues would ostracize them (64%) if they didn’t work, were concerned about their patients’ continuity of care (63.8%), had unsupportive leadership (56.2%), or believed they could not be easily replaced (52.6%).
Among the 316 respondents who filled in additional reasons, 64.9% said they had a very hard time finding someone to cover their shift, 61.1% described a strong cultural norm to work unless extremely sick, and 57% expressed uncertainty about what is considered “too sick to work.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded the research. The authors reported no disclosures.