Perceptions of illness and their impact on sickness absence

Abstract

Employees had more negative perceptions about their illness than OPs. Positive perceptions were associated with an earlier return to work. Unhelpful negative beliefs about illness need to be addressed by OPs.

Is Absence Related to Work Stress? A Repeated Cross‐Sectional Study on a Special Police Force

“…Greater depth could be given to our study by investigating individual proneness factors such as physical or mental illnesses. Previous studies on absence proneness, based upon long absence aggregation periods such as those we investigated, confirmed that many occupational, social, cultural, and individual factors affect the propensity to be absent [Johns, 2008]: for example, perception of illness [Giri et al, 2009], health-related behavior [Laaksonen et al, 2009], previous mental/behavioral and physical disorder [Reis et al, 2011;Roelen et al, 2011], socioeconomic conditions [Lu et al, 2010], work-family conflict [Jansen et al, 2006], and coping strategies [van Rhenen et al, 2008]. Perceived absence legitimacy is also a significant cause of absence [Johns, 2011].…”

Distinct work‐related, clinical and psychological factors predict return to work following treatment in four different cancer types

“…Therefore, healthcare professionals working with cancer patients may benefit from an understanding of how cognitive processes influence patient outcomes, such as RTW, and may benefit from a skill base to elicit individual patient beliefs in order to support patients both during and after treatment. This skill is important as recent research has shown that both health professionals [29] and employers [30] report illness perceptions that are discordant with those reported by cancer survivors. Communication skills training that incorporates cognitive (i.e.…”

Beliefs about medicine and illness are associated with fear of cancer recurrence in women taking adjuvant endocrine therapy for breast cancer

“…Each dimension was rated on an 11‐point Likert scale and analysed separately. Research indicates that the BIPQ is a reliable and valid measure of illness perceptions across a range of patient groups (Giri, Poole, Nightingale & Robertson, ; Lanteri‐Minet et al ., ). To assess causal beliefs, participants were asked to identify three of the most likely causes of their breast cancer.…”