Hui Lin
Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Title: A randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of participatory training for sick leave reduction in China
Biography
Biography: Hui Lin
Abstract
Occupational injuries and illness not only threaten worker’s health, but also cause a great deal of loss like sick leave in economy. In this project, we first observed 31.7% workers reported sick leave with losing 3 workdays averagly. Then, we used Logistic Analysis with Backward stepwise method to estimate odds ratios and 95% CI of factors associated with sick leave, and found the possibility for taking sick leave increased in workers with being female, more working hours per week, longer service, higher tress, and younger age. To evaluate the effectiveness of participatory training for sick leave reduction, we led a one-year Randomized Controlled Trial, with 918 and 2,561 workers receiving participatory and didactic training, respectively. Participants were asked to report workdays lost caused by sick leave during the previous 12 months before training and the next 12 months after training. We found that the propotion of workers taking sick leave in the intervention group reduced from 34.5% to 25.2%(P<0.001), and the rate reductions in the control group was not statistically significant. At one-year follow up, the workdays lost in intervention group and control group didn’t reduced significantly. Finally, we developed a method to measure the cost-benefit ratios of the programs and found that the participatory training was more effective in saving cost for sick leave reduction than the didactic training.