Retention

Physicians leaving and reentering clinical practice can have significant medical workforce implications. This study surveyed inactive physicians younger than typical retirement age to determine their reasons for clinical inactivity and what barriers, real or perceived, there were to reentry into the medical workforce. [from abstract]

Carmen Dolea of the World Health Organization talks about the challenge of retaining health workers in rural areas, and how CapacityPlus is helping to apply the WHO’s new retention recommendations. [from author]

This paper examines the issue of workforce stability and turnover in the context of policy attempts to improve retention of health workers. [from abstract]

The article describes CapacityPlus’s rapid retention survey tool for determining the relative importance health workers place on characteristics related to their choice of employment. This will allow human resource maangers to rapidly assess retention preferences to better pinpoint the incentives and interventions that would most cost-effecively motivate health workers to take up posts in underserved facilities. [adapted from abstract]

Retention of GPs in the more remote parts of Australia remains an important issue in workforce planning. The Northern Territory of Australia experiences very high rates of staff turnover. This research examined how the process of forming place attachment between GP and practice location might influence prospects for retention. [from abstract]

This article analysed the rural doctor shortage in Nepal and reviewed the international literature for strategies that may be suitable for use in Nepal. [from abstract]

This research aimed at examining the effects of mentoring functions on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of new nurses in Taiwan’s hospitals.

After a year-long consultative effort, this document proposes sixteen evidence-based recommendations on how to improve the recruitment and retention of health workers in underserved areas. It also offers a guide for policy makers to choose the most appropriate interventions, and to implement, monitor and evaluate their impact over time. [from publisher]

This article investigated the reasons for the high rates of community health worker attrition in Bangladesh. [adapted from abstract]

Retaining physicians in remote settings can be challenging owing to the heavy workload and harsh environmental conditions and to the lack of opportunities for professional development. This study evaluated corrective measure to address the dearth of physicians in the north of Norway. [adapted from abstract]

This article outlines the introduction of a special contracting system to recruit health workers to improve the posting, recruitment and retention of health workers in rural and remote areas. [adapted from abstract]

This paper builds on earlier work assessing the evidence on effectiveness of interventions to increase access to health workers in rural and remote areas - focusing mainly on studies that evaluated interventions and their impact on the health workforce and health systems performance. [adapted from introduction]

In Ghana, faith-based organisations play an essential role in providing health care services, especially in rural areas. For a variety of reasons, it can be difficult to retain health care workers, putting essential services under threat. The National Catholic Health Service carried out some vital research to find out how to address the problem. [from author]

A study across three countries to identify policies which would help recruit and retain health workers in rural areas revealed that there is a danger in one size fits all recommendations when it comes to designing human resource policies. Results also show that there is room for both financial and non-financial incentives in human resource interventions in developing countries. [from author]

This article posits that out-migration of health workers is not a critical contributor to health workforce shortages in Nigeria’s rural and remote areas and that more important factors include: contraction of government health spending as a percentage of GDP despite deteriorating health conditions, public health management systems that operate by default rather than by design, spartan living conditions outside urban areas, inadequate training of appropriate cadres of health staff, limited facilities and medications for effective delivery of clinical services, and burnout of overworked and unde

This toolkit was designed for nurse employers across the province of Ontario to use as a resource in working toward the 70% full-time nurse commitment. It is a practical guide to assist Nurse Managers and Human Resource Staff in identifying staffing needs and creating organization-specific strategies to increase full-time employment for nurses. [from author]

This technical brief focuses on issues around health worker motivation, job satisfaction, incentives, retention and performance. [from author]

The objective of this study was to analyse in what way HRH recruitment, deployment and retention at the district level are influenced by external funding; and to what extent this is in line with national and district policies and strategies. [from abstract]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is severe competition for personnel and staff time between various health programmes and between public and private providers. Such competition is reinforced by the vertical nature of various funding mechanisms supported by bilateral donors, international NGOs and global initiatives. The objective of this study was to analyse in what way HRH recruitment, deployment and retention at the district level are influenced by externally funded programmes. [from summary]

This study sought to gain understanding of the motivations of community service (CS) officers to continue working at the same district hospital for a subsequent year after their obligatory year was over. The objectives were to determine the number of CS officers who actually remained at the same district hospital after completing their CS in 2002, the major factors that influenced them to remain and factors that would encourage the 2003 cohort of CS officers to remain at the same district hospital for an additional year. [from abstract]

Because of the demographic changes, appropriate measures are needed to prevent early exit from work and to encourage workers to prolong their working life. The aims of this study were to examine the reasons for voluntary early retirement, the reasons for continuing working life after the official retirement age and the predictive value of the reasons mentioned. [adapted from abstract]

Most of the district health services in Malawi are provided by nurses and clinical health officers specially trained to provide services that would normally be provided by fully qualified doctors or specialists. This study explores how these cadres are managed and motivated and the impact this has on their performance. [adapted from abstract]

This study analyzed data from a human resources health facility survey conducted in Kenya. The study looked into the status of attrition rates and the proportion of attrition due to retirement, resignation or death among doctors, clinical officers, nurses and laboratory and pharmacy specialists in surveyed facilities. [adapted from abstract]

Retention continues to be a serious challenge in the human resources for health crisis. There is increasingly widespread commitment to initiatives to attract and retain skilled workers, especially in rural areas. The purpose of this brief is to update and document some contributions made from 2005 to 2008 in the area of worker retention. [from author]

Mid-level cadres of health workers provide the bulk of emergency obstetric and neonatal care in Malawi. This study set out to explore the perceptions of mid-level providers regarding the factors affecting their performance and retention within the Malawian health system. [adapted from author]

This paper serves as background documentation for the first expert meeting for developing the evidence-based recommendations for increasing access to health workers in remote and rural areas through improved retention, to be held in Geneva on 2-4 February 2009. It is intended to provide an overview of the issues, challenges and potential solutions to the problem of inequitable access to health workers in remote and rural areas. [from introduction}

This presentation outlines the work on retention, incentives and positive practice environments as it relates to the Kampala Declaration.

This presentation outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the DCE, an increasingly popular methodology for eliciting health worker preferences regarding rural jobs. [adapted from author]

This presentation reviews the current state of health worker retention in rural areas, discusses interventions aimed at addressing the problem and describes the challenges and directions for solving it.

This presentation outlines the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to scale up health care delivery in rural areas through health care worker retention programs.