Absenteísmo por motivo de doença: estudo de caso em unidades de terapia intensiva adulta e pediátrica de um hospital do Estado de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The Intensive Care Unit of a hospital requires a high level of care, as professionals need to deal with the different demands of patients and family members, which can increase suffering, illnesses and absenteeism. The aim of this paper was to analyze the working conditions, the causes and the and reactions to sickness-related absenteeism in adult and pediatric intensive care units of a state public urgency and emergency hospital. This is a case study with 13 semi-structured interviews submitted to content analysis. Several situations that contributed to the illness were identified, such as work overload due to the patient's care profile, the accumulation of activities during the shift, more than one work relationship, failures in communication between the multidisciplinary team, biological risk and external factors. Pregnancy is still seen as a problem for people management and workers who get sick repeatedly are labeled as unproductive. It is considered necessary to carry out interventions that seek to improve working conditions and workers' health, as well as better prepare managers to manage the teams.