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Comparative Study
. 2019 Nov;61(6):453-463.
doi: 10.1002/1348-9585.12070. Epub 2019 Jul 11.

Presenteeism as a predictor of disability pension: A prospective study among nursing professionals and care assistants in Sweden

Klas Gustafsson  1 , Gunnar Bergström  2   3 , Staffan Marklund  1 , Emmanuel Aboagye  2   3 , Constanze Leineweber  4
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Presenteeism as a predictor of disability pension: A prospective study among nursing professionals and care assistants in Sweden

Klas Gustafsson et al. J Occup Health. 2019 Nov.

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to examine how presenteeism affects the risk of future disability pension among nursing professionals and care assistants (assistant nurses, hospital ward assistants, home-based personal care workers, and child care assistants). A specific objective was to compare health and social care employees with all other occupations.

Methods: The study was based on a representative sample of working women and men (n = 43 682) aged 16-64 years, who had been interviewed between 2001 and 2013 for the Swedish Work Environment Survey conducted every second year since 1989. Information on disability pension was obtained from the Social Insurance Agency's database (2002-2014). The studied predictors were related to disability pension using Cox's proportional hazard regression with hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) and selected confounders were controlled for. The follow-up period was 6.7 years (SD 4.2).

Results: Health and social care employees with frequent presenteeism showed a particularly elevated risk of future disability pension after adjusting for sex, sociodemographic variables, physical and psychosocial working conditions, and self-rated health symptoms. In the amalgamated occupational group of nursing professionals and care assistants, the impact on disability pension of having engaged in presenteeism four times or more during the prior year remained significant (HR = 3.72, 95% CI = 2.43-5.68).

Conclusions: The study suggests that frequent presenteeism contributes to an increased risk of disability pension among nursing professionals and care assistants as well as among all other occupations.

Keywords: disability pension; health care workers; nurses; presenteeism; working conditions.

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Conflict of interest statement

Approval of the research protocol: Data are registered information that originate from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and the Social Insurance Agency (SIA). The compilation of the data set was conducted by Statistics Sweden and given to research team in anonymized format. Informed consent: The data from Statistics Sweden are based on informed consent to answer the SWES between 1993 and 2013. Data from the SIA were information about granted disability pensions and were collected for research purposes without consent from the individual. The Swedish law on Research Ethics states that research use of register data that have been given without consent and contain sensitive information, such as health conditions, must get approval from a Regional Research Ethics committee. Such an approval must be sought for research use of personal information even where anonymization has taken place after the linkage occurs. The research protocol was approved by the Regional Research Ethics Committee in 2015 Stockholm, Sweden (Dnr: 2015/2203‐31/5 and Dnr: 2018/5:2). Other researchers may obtain the same data in the same manner as we got it from Statistics Sweden, URL: http://www.scb.se/. Registry and the registration no. of the study: Trial No. K824435003 (A), Karolinska institutet. Animal studies: This is not an animal study. Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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