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Understanding Health Workers' Job Preferences to Improve Rural Retention in Timor-Leste: Findings from a Discrete Choice Experiment.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Timor-Leste built its health workforce up from extremely low levels after its war of independence, with the assistance of Cuban training, but faces challenges as the first cohorts of doctors will shortly be freed from their contracts with government. Retaining doctors, nurses and midwives in remote areas requires a good understanding of health worker preferences. METHODS:The article reports on a discrete choice experiment (DCE) carried out amongst 441 health workers, including 173 doctors, 150 nurses and 118 midwives. Qualitative methods were conducted during the design phase. The attributes which emerged were wages, skills upgrading/specialisation, location, working conditions, transportation and housing. FINDINGS:One of the main findings of the study is the relative lack of importance of wages for doctors, which could be linked to high intrinsic motivation, perceptions of having an already highly paid job (relative to local conditions), and/or being in a relatively early stage of their career for most respondents. Professional development provides the highest satisfaction with jobs, followed by the working conditions. Doctors with less experience, males and the unmarried are more flexible about location. For nurses and midwives, skill upgrading emerged as the most cost effective method. CONCLUSIONS:The study is the first of its kind conducted in Timor-Leste. It provides policy-relevant information to balance financial and non-financial incentives for different cadres and profiles of staff. It also augments a thin literature on the preferences of working doctors (as opposed to medical students) in low and middle income countries and provides insights into the ability to instil motivation to work in rural areas, which may be influenced by rural recruitment and Cuban-style training, with its emphasis on community service.

SUBMITTER: Smitz MF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5112867 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Understanding Health Workers' Job Preferences to Improve Rural Retention in Timor-Leste: Findings from a Discrete Choice Experiment.

Smitz Marc-Francois MF Witter Sophie S Lemiere Christophe C Eozenou Patrick Hoang-Vu PH Lievens Tomas T Zaman Rashid U RU Engelhardt Kay K Hou Xiaohui X

PloS one 20161115 11

<h4>Background</h4>Timor-Leste built its health workforce up from extremely low levels after its war of independence, with the assistance of Cuban training, but faces challenges as the first cohorts of doctors will shortly be freed from their contracts with government. Retaining doctors, nurses and midwives in remote areas requires a good understanding of health worker preferences.<h4>Methods</h4>The article reports on a discrete choice experiment (DCE) carried out amongst 441 health workers, in ...[more]

PMID: 27846242

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Project description:The scarcity of rural doctors has undermined the ability of health systems in low and middle-income countries like India to provide quality services to rural populations. This study examines job preferences of doctors and nurses to inform what works in terms of rural recruitment strategies. Job acceptance of different strategies was compared to identify policy options for increasing the availability of clinical providers in rural areas. In 2010 a Discrete Choice Experiment was conducted in India. The study sample included final year medical and nursing students, and in-service doctors and nurses serving at Primary Health Centers. Eight job attributes were identified and a D-efficient fractional factorial design was used to construct pairs of job choices. Respondent acceptance of job choices was analyzed using multi-level logistic regression. Location mattered; jobs in areas offering urban amenities had a high likelihood of being accepted. Higher salary had small effect on doctor, but large effect on nurse, acceptance of rural jobs. At five times current salary levels, 13% (31%) of medical students (doctors) were willing to accept rural jobs. At half this level, 61% (52%) of nursing students (nurses) accepted a rural job. The strategy of reserving seats for specialist training in exchange for rural service had a large effect on job acceptance among doctors, nurses and nursing students. For doctors and nurses, properly staffed and equipped health facilities, and housing had small effects on job acceptance. Rural upbringing was not associated with rural job acceptance. Incentivizing doctors for rural service is expensive. A broader strategy of substantial salary increases with improved living, working environment, and education incentives is necessary. For both doctors and nurses, the usual strategies of moderate salary increases, good facility infrastructure, and housing will not be effective. Non-physician clinicians like nurse-practitioners offer an affordable alternative for delivering rural health care.

Project description:Although the number of medical workers has increased rapidly, its scarcity in rural areas remains a serious problem in China. This study aimed to investigate medical students' stated preferences when choosing a job, so as to assist policy makers with designing alternative interventions to address the unbalanced distribution of the health workforce in China.A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted to elicit the job preferences of final year medical students. Attributes include work location, hospital type, monthly income, bianzhi (which can be loosely regarded as state administrative staffing), work environment, Training and career development opportunity. This study was carried out during April to June 2017 in 4 medical universities in Shandong Province, China. Mixed logit models were used to analyze the relative importance of job attributes.A total of 519 medical students participated in the survey. All 6 attributes were statistically significant with the expected sign and demonstrated the existence of preference heterogeneity. In the main effects mixed logit model, working in the city and a superior working environment were most strongly associated with job preference. A relatively unexpected finding was the relatively lower utility of offering bianzhi in job preferences. Subgroup analysis showed that females and those who have an urban background were significantly willing to pay more for working in the city. The most preferred scenario for medical students was to select a better work environment job in a tertiary hospital in the city, which could offer 9000 CNY monthly, with sufficient training and career development opportunities and bianzhi.Both monetary and nonmonetary intervention could be considered by policy makers to attract medical students to work in rural areas in China. There exists preference heterogeneity on medical students' job preferences, which should also be taken into account in developing more effective policy incentive packages.

Project description:BACKGROUND:There is a deficiency of healthcare administrators in China as compared with other countries; furthermore, the distribution is unequal. To inform an effective policy intervention, it is crucial to understand healthcare administration students' career decision-making. This study aims to investigate the undergraduate students' stated preferences when choosing a job. METHODS:A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted among a population-based multistage sample of 668 final year undergraduate healthcare administration students during April to June 2017 in eight universities of China to elicit their job preferences. Attributes include location, monthly income, bianzhi (which refers to the established posts and can be loosely regarded as state administrative staffing), training and career development opportunity, working environment and workload. Conditional and mixed logit models were used to analyze the relative importance of job attributes. RESULTS:All six attributes were statistically significant with the expected sign and demonstrated the existence of preference heterogeneity. Monthly income, workload and working environment were of most concern to healthcare administration students when deciding their future. Among the presented attributes bianzhi was of the least concern. Sub-group analysis showed that students who have an urban background and/or with higher annual family incomes were willing to pay more for working in the city. In addition, students from western and middle universities valued bianzhi higher than students from eastern universities. CONCLUSIONS:This is the first study focusing on the career decision-making of Chinese healthcare administration students at a critical career decision-making point. Both monetary and non-monetary interventions could be considered by policy-makers to attract students to work in health institutions, especially in rural and remote health institutions in China. There exists preference heterogeneity on healthcare administration students' job preferences, which should also be taken into account in developing more effective policy incentive packages.

Project description:IntroductionTimely empirical evidence is important in the success of health systems, and such evidence is necessary for informed policy making to address inequity in the health workforce. Literature is ripe with incentives that affect recruitment and retention of physicians in rural and remote areas, but such data in still lacking in the Philippine setting. Discrete choice experiment is one methodology utilized by the World Health Organization which provides both qualitative and quantitative information to aid policy makers in health human resource management.MethodsThe study utilized a discrete choice experiment involving three phases: 1) identification of incentives and levels using key informant interviews and focus group discussions, 2) selection of scenarios utilizing an experimental design, and 3) administration of survey based on WHO guidelines. Conditional logistic regression, point estimates, and correlational analyses were done using Stata.ResultsThere is significant association between type of background and considerations for rural practice among the respondents based on Pearson's correlation (p < 0.01). The respondents put more value into non-wage rural job posting incentives than small to modest base salary increases. The high willingness to pay for the presence of supervision, relative location of work areas from families, and status of workplace infrastructure/equipment or supplies suggest the importance of workplace conditions to attract rural health physicians. Combinations of wage and non-wage incentives may be necessary to provide for the most cost-efficient increases in rural job post uptake rates based on post-estimate calculations.ConclusionPhilippine medical interns and young doctors value non-wage incentives in considering rural health job postings. Rural health job postings with these incentives are predicted to significantly increase recruitment in rural health job posts, particularly when combinations of wage and high-impact non-wage incentives are considered.

Project description:ObjectivesTo understand the key attributes in designing effective interventions for improving healthcare workers' (HCWs') hand hygiene compliance and HCWs' preference for these attributes.DesignA discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with five attributes extracted from the framework of Total Quality Management that can be applied in the design of hand hygiene interventions. They were hand hygiene monitoring, open discussion, message framing, resources accessibility and top management involvement. An addition attribute, peer hand hygiene performance, was considered as a contextual factor. Data were analysed by a conditional logit model to evaluate how these attributes impact HCWs' hand hygiene compliance.SettingThe DCE was conducted with participants from a university hospital in Taichung.ParticipantsHCWs involved in daily patient-care activities (N=387).ResultsTo enhance their compliance, HCWs had strong and consistent preferences in having open discussion of hand hygiene problems ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]), easy access to hand hygiene resources ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) and top management involvement ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). For hand hygiene monitoring ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]), HCWs preferred to be monitored by infection control staff over their department head if their peer hand hygiene performance was low. On the other hand, when the peer performance was high, monitoring by their department head could improve their hand hygiene compliance. Similarly, how educational messages were framed impacted compliance and also depended on the peer hand hygiene performance. When the peer performance was low, HCWs were more likely to increase their compliance in reaction to loss-framed educational messages ([Formula: see text],[Formula: see text]). When the peer performance was high, gain-framed messages that focus on the benefit of compliance were more effective in inducing compliance.ConclusionsEach intervention design has its unique impact on HCWs' hand hygiene compliant behaviour. The proposed approach can be used to evaluate HCWs' preference and compliance of an intervention before it is implemented.

Dataset Information

Understanding Health Workers' Job Preferences to Improve Rural Retention in Timor-Leste: Findings from a Discrete Choice Experiment.

Publications

Understanding Health Workers' Job Preferences to Improve Rural Retention in Timor-Leste: Findings from a Discrete Choice Experiment.

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