Introduction
Healthcare centers face many challenges, including inadequate funds, mismanagement, shortage of drugs, insufficient personnel, and workers’ absenteeism that negatively impact health service delivery. Therefore, it is the responsibility of healthcare administrators and the government to develop policies that guide and promote the accepted codes of conduct regarding employees’ behavior in the workplace. The paper analyses the absenteeism policy adopted by King Fahad Hospital-Madinah to monitor and combat workers’ absenteeism in the named hospital.
Health Policy Analysis
The suitable policy is the Hospital Wide Policy of reference index HWP-061. It is the newly adopted absenteeism policy to monitor, record, and govern employees’ workplace attendance patterns. Indeed, the policy content includes the title and the name – ABSENTEEISM and the name for this HWP-061. Consequently, the population is all hospital staff in King Fahad Hospital-Madinah, KSA. Moreover, this policy is applied in the medical and healthcare scope and applies to all medical professionals, whether they are nurses or attending physicians. According to the policy, absenteeism is defined as an unnecessary and repeated failure to show up in the hospital premises without notification or permission from the relevant authority or body.
HWP-061 describes and explains rules and individual penalties and actions. HWP-061 aims at addressing and reducing the effect experienced in hospitals due to employee absenteeism. Mbombi et al. (2018) identify some effects of nurses’ absenteeism on the remaining nurses on duty. Their research finding indicates that the work stress on the remaining nurses harmed their psychological state and professional well-being. Absenteeism also thwarts the quality of services and demoralizes nurses due to work stress, leading to substandard service.
It is worth noting that the indicated policy is based on the evidence of factual data from several studies reflecting existing problems in the field of medicine. However, for a more thorough check of the operability and effectiveness of this innovation, more costs, efforts, and time are required. The Hospital Wide Absenteeism policy is
built based on data and the proven effect of nurses’ absenteeism that has influenced the past and the current provision of healthcare services. The policy aims at enhancing both employees’ job turnout and appropriate patient care. Therefore, the stockholder who will benefit from this analysis is a person who has some share with a particular hospital. This person has special rights and privileges necessary to carry out competent and effective management of employees of a medical institution.
The Hospital Wide Policy is intended to reduce nurses’ absenteeism by imposing rules and procedures in their application. The first formulated policy states that the administration investigates any absences incurred by staff. Upon validating its authenticity, the administration could impose equivalent days for service. This enables the hospital to cover the lost working hours due to employee absenteeism. Moreover, the policy also tends to address repeated acts of absenteeism. According to HWP-061, habitual employees must be reported to the medical director for proper consultation and recommendation. Upon thorough discussion and investigation, disciplinary actions take their course depending on the nature of the absence. Lastly, the policy encourages the hospital to use workers’ attendance records in considering their contracts. This is to say, employees’ stored data acts as references concerning employees’ behavior and activities. Therefore, it forms a basis for interpretations as employee termination or contract renewal is concerned.
Accurately monitoring and controlling employee absenteeism demands an organized system that records the availability of workers on the hospital premises. The policy procedure provides steps to assess employees’ reporting cultures. For example, the policy relies on individual workers to report absentees to immediate supervisors on duty. Reporting is necessary to notify the supervisors and administrators of the low workforce in the system. Other absenteeism between shifts must also be reported as they are essential in evaluating employees’ work efficiency. For authenticity, the supervisors who report cases of an employee absent for personal affairs ascertain by filling out the absent form and fixing their signatures. After that, the duly filled absent form is forwarded to the personnel administration department following approval of the Head of the department. The hospital, with due respect, refers to employees’ records in considering the evaluation and renewal of job contracts. Lastly, the procedure also holds staff who informed their collogues over the telephone absent unless valid information is presented to the Head of the Department for consideration.
Undoubtedly, this “tool” has several gaps and is not a universal, high-quality tool in the fight against absenteeism. For instance, some would “cover up” for their colleagues and thereby not be noticed. Moreover, individual workers would decide not to report cases of absence to the relevant persons. Supervisors may also fail to present the duly filled absent form to the personnel administration department. The act also affects the complete implementation of the HWP-061 policy in monitoring and controlling worker job attendance. Therefore, the HWP-061 policy needs biometric incorporation to automatically detect the present employees without depending on supervisors and workers who may fail to report attendance matters.
Moreover, at the moment, medical professionals need to consider previous mistakes and draw certain conclusions from them. The best option in this situation is to create a newer, updated, improved, and verified policy. Thus, the newly created policy should be based on the principles of clear and uniform regulations, specific rules and standards, flexibility and rapid coordination, and the encouragement and motivation of employees (Hassink, 2018). Such a policy should balance discipline and high employee interest in work processes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, workers’ absenteeism is detrimental to any organization and must be dealt with accordingly. In healthcare centers, employee absenteeism adversely affects both provision and quality of healthcare services. Some effects of absenteeism in healthcare centers of concern are work stress among nurses, doctors, and other staff, poor- and low-quality services, and delayed service deliveries. Sometimes, medication errors occur due to a lack of morale and psychological stress among nurses and doctors, leading to death among patients. The named effects led to the introduction of the Hospital Wide Policy at King Fahad Hospital-Madinah to help the hospital administrators track employee attendance. Therefore, policies in any organization address a specific problem that affects the organization’s well-being.
References
Mbombi, M., Mothiba, T., Malema, R., & Malatji, M. (2018). The effects of absenteeism on nurses remaining on duty at a tertiary hospital of Limpopo province. Curationis, 41(1). doi:10.4102/curation.v41i1.1924
Hassink, W. (2018). How to reduce workplace absenteeism: Financial incentives and changes in working conditions are key to many broad and tailor-made programs. IZA World of Labor. doi:10.15185/izawol.447