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This purpose of this study was to investigate the role of nurses’ resilience as an indicator of their mental health on sick leave absenteeism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 2020 to identify the predictors of absenteeism among 260 nurses working in two training hospitals delivering specialized services in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Data was collected through the use of standard questionnaires including demographic information, nurses’ resilience, intention for job turnover and absenteeism from the workplace. To predict sick leave absenteeism, regression analyses were implemented.

Study results revealed that the most influencing features for predicting the probability of taking sick leave among nurses were marital status, tenacity, age, work experience and optimism. Logistic regression also depicted that nurses who had less faith in God or less self-control were more likely to take sick leave.

The resilience of nurses working in the COVID-19 pandemic was relatively low, which needs careful consideration to apply for organizational support. Main challenge that most of the health systems face include an inadequate supply of nurses which consequently lead to reduced efficiency, poor quality of care and decreased job performance. Thus, hospital managers need to put appropriate managerial interventions into practice, such as building a pleasant and healthy work environment, to improve nurses’ resilience in response to heavy workloads and stressful conditions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine such a relationship, thus contributing findings will provide a clear contribution to nursing management and decision-making processes. Resilience is an important factor for nurses who constantly face challenging situations in a multifaceted health-care system.

Health-care workers (HCWs) are at increased risk of exposure to the COVID-19 virus, which necessitates implementing transmission prevention measures in health-care delivery facilities, particularly hospitals. This study aims to assess COVID-19 risk in a health-care setting and recommend managerial strategies to cope with existing risk procedures.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among HCWs working in a general hospital in Qazvin, northwest of the country. A total of 310 employees working at different clinical and non-clinical occupational levels participated in the study. The WHO COVID-19 risk assessment tool categorised HCWs in high- or low-risk groups exposed to COVID-19 infection.

Findings revealed statistically significant relationships between workplace exposure to the COVID-19 virus and variables, including job type, performing the aerosol-generating procedure, access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and being trained on Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidelines (p < 0.05). HCWs older than 36 years were at 8% more risk of COVID-19 virus. Being a medical doctor or delivering health-care services as a nurse were relatively 28% and 32% times more likely to be at high risk of infection than other hospital staff categories. Having inadequate access to PPE and lack of training on IPC guidelines were also key determinants of high-risk infection.

As most cases at risk of COVID-19 infection belonged to frontline health-care staff in older age groups, this study recommend limiting the exposure of vulnerable staff to COVID-19 patients, increasing protective measures for HCWs and providing essential information about infection control procedures.

Protecting households against financial risks of healthcare services is one of the main functions of health systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a pooled estimate of the prevalence of catastrophic healthcare expenditures (CHE) among households in Iran.

Both international (PubMed, Scopus and Clarivate Analytics (previously known as the Institute for Scientific Information)) and Iranian (Scientific Information Database, Iranmedex and Magiran) scientific databases were searched for published studies on CHE among Iranian households. The following keywords in Persian and English language were used as keywords for the search: “catastrophic healthcare costs,” “catastrophic health costs,” “impoverishment due to health costs,” “fair financial contribution,” “prevalence,” “frequency” and “Iran” with and without “health system”. The I²-test and χ²-based Q-test suggested heterogeneity in the reported prevalence among the qualified studies; thus, a random-effects model was used to estimate the overall prevalence of CHE among households in Iran.

A total of 24 studies with a cumulative sample of 301,097 households were included in the study. The estimated pooled prevalence of CHE among households was 7 percent (95 percent confidence interval: 6–8 percent). Meta-regression analysis indicated that the prevalence of CHE was inversely related to the sample size (p<0.05). The results did not suggest a significant association between the prevalence of CHE and the year of data collection.

The findings revealed that the prevalence of CHE among Iranian households is significantly higher than 1 percent, which is the goal set out in Iran’s fourth five-year development plan. This warrants further policy interventions to protect households from incurring CHE in Iran.