Predictors of employees’ psychophysical health and sickness absenteeism: Modelling based on REBT framework

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to examine whether negative experiences at work, irrational beliefs, alone and in interaction, and negative affectivity as a mediator, could predict psychosomatic complaints and frequency of sickness absenteeism. The hypothesized model showed acceptable fit to the data, suggesting that negative affectivity mediates the relationship between negative experiences and irrational beliefs on the one hand, and psychosomatic complaints on the other. The results also revealed no significant effect of interaction between negative experiences and irrational beliefs, while fatigue and physical symptoms have a significant and direct effect on the number of days of absence. It was concluded that the lack of an effect of psychological symptoms on absenteeism may indicate that employees in Serbia do not see them as a sufficient reason for sick leave. The results are discussed within frameworks of Rational-emotive behaviour therapy and strategic stress management approach.

Work-related stress, burnout, and related sociodemographic factors among nurses

“…Work stress is comprised of the mental and physical conditions, which hurt the productivity, effectiveness, psychophysical health, work ability, satisfaction, and quality of work of individual workers in the workplace. [1,2,5–7] Thus, work stress is an interactional construct encompassing a misfit between environmental demands and personal abilities. [8,9] Nursing professionals who are severely stressed could render poor quality of service, which can result in low patient satisfaction and low turnover.…”

Psychophysical workload of workers in Slovenia

“…With the help of a four-point Likert scale, the individual estimated how many times in the last four weeks they had identified a certain health issue as affecting them (possible answers are "No", "Yes, but not often", "Yes, often" and "Yes, every day"). The reliability of the original scale was 0.85 (Popov et al, 2016) and the reliability of the Slovenian translation was 0.80 (Kuhta, 2016).…”