Mitigating Absenteeism in the Hospital-based Workforce During a Disaster Involving Contamination or Contagion

Recent studies suggest that approximately 1/2 of the nation's hospital-based health care workforce may not report for duty during a disaster involving contagion or contamination (e.g. pandemic influenza or a terrorism incident involving chemicals or radiation). The demand on the health care system will be unprecedented during these types of incidents, and few industries are as poorly positioned to respond to a projected surge in need as the health care system. Various barriers to the workforce reporting for duty during a public health disaster include the fear of contagion, the need to care for dependents, a fear of professional liability, and an anticipated lack of reliable and safe transportation.

This project explores mechanisms by which these barriers may be realistically mitigated in order to drive purposeful emergency preparedness for the health care sector and maintain the viability of this critical infrastructure. This project involved conducting blended focus groups of multiple categories of hospital employees and the subsequent development of an internet-based survey intended to explore three issues amongst the personnel of both a large urban adult and children's hospitals: 1) Establishing the prevalence of all hospital employees that are able and willing to work during a pandemic, 2) Exploring the barriers to reporting for work that affect this population, and 3) Assessing the uptake of potential interventions to mitigate these barriers.