FARGO - 'Tis the season – for sick days.
“We are starting to see an escalation now with the weather changes as people adjust to that,” said Dr. Curtis Nyhus, a family medicine provider who works at the Sanford Walk-In Clinic. “People are inside more now, so things spread easier and a little bit quicker compared to the summertime.”
To slow the spread, Nyhus cautions people to stay home when they’re contagious.
Whether to work or stay home might not be as clear for adults as it is for kids who have school and child care policies indicating when they have to stay home.
Generally employers do not have policies of when their employees should stay home, said LeAnn Moos, president of the Fargo Moorhead Human Resources Association.
“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” she said. “Employers need people to work, but they also need healthy people to work.”
Employees need to use their best judgment, Moos said.
“Even when you’re ill, you’re not at the top of your game,” she said. “And you’re risking the health of the rest of the team.”
Allowing employees the flexibility to work from home if possible can help encourage people to stay home when sick, she said. Supervisors and managers, she said, also set an example.
“If a supervisor comes to work sick all the time, it kind of becomes an expectation,” she said.
When to stay home
Anytime you have a fever, especially if it’s combined with coughing, Nyhus said stay home.
“You’re going to spread most of the germs,” he said. “If it’s contagious, the easiest (way to) spread is with coughing.”
If a sore throat seems to be getting worse instead of better, Nyhus suggests getting a throat culture to see if it’s strep throat. If so, you’ll have to stay home for 24 hours while treating it with antibiotics.
People are testing positive for influenza, Nyhus said, so if you have the symptoms – fever, headache, sore throat, body aches, and a painful, deeper cough – don’t work until you’re fever-free for 24 hours.
Influenza can last for 10 days, but if you see a doctor within 48 hours of the symptoms starting, you can get an anti-viral pill to help shorten the course and speed up recovery, Nyhus said.
“The main thing is respect for other people,” he said. “Good hand washing is to prevent becoming sick, and if you are sick, the best thing you can do is prevent yourself from exposing others.”
If nothing else, Nyhus said, listen to your body.
When we work while sick, we’re not very productive. Lost productivity on the job accounts for up to 60 percent of employer health costs – more than if the sick employees had taken a sick day, according to WebMD.com.
Dr. Thomas Fekete, section chief of infectious diseases at Temple University in Philadelphia told Everyday Health, a health information website, that most people are wrong about when to stay home, and the most contagious period is at the beginning of an illness, before people feel really sick.
So if you wake up feeling a bit under the weather, Fekete said that’s the day to stay home. The first six to 12 hours are when symptoms can significantly worsen. By the time people start to feel really sick, they might already be at work and exposing their coworkers to their germs.
Even if you think you can get through the day, Everyday Health recommends staying home if you:
- have limited access to a bathroom.
- have little ability to wash your hands often.
- have nowhere to store or use medication.
- work directly with the public or with food.
- have to make life or death decisions.
- work outside in the heat or in a strenuous job like construction.
- take medication that makes you groggy and interferes with your job.
Working without sick leave
Some people work because they don’t have sick days.
The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave, and 38 percent of private-sector workers lack paid sick days, according to the Center for American Progress, a Washington D.C.-based independent nonpartisan educational institute.
LeAnn Moos, president of the Fargo Moorhead Human Resources Association, estimates 50 percent of local companies offer an adequate amount of sick leave. The more professional environments are going to offer more, she said.
A study of Connecticut’s policy mandating five days of sick leave found that full use of the leave would cost an employer 0.4 percent of their sales revenue on average. Without paid sick days, employees come to work unhealthy, costing employers $160 billion per year in lower productivity levels, according to the center.
Workers without paid sick leave are 150 percent more likely to go to work sick and contagious than those who have paid sick days, according to the Center for American Progress.
Many of the workers least likely to have paid sick days are those who work in schools, elder care facilities, and the food service industry, according to the center. In the restaurant industry, the center states, 70 percent of women and 67 percent of men report cooking, preparing or serving food while sick.
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