Analysis of Happiness and Engagement among Doctor, Dentist, Nurse and Pharmacist, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand, 2017

Abstract

People excellence is one of the four excellences (4E) in the 20-year Public Health Strategy. One important issue is the human resource retention, as there is a tendency for health personnel to resign from their careers resulting in the scarcity of health staff, especially doctors, dentists, nurses and pharmacists. In this regard, happiness and engagement are found to be associated with the retention of personnel. The objective of this study was to assess the level of happiness and engagement to the work of the 4 careers with particular attention on the personal and placement factors and their association with happiness and engagement with the expectation to identify interventions to enhance personnel’s happiness. Study data were collected from the public health happiness survey in 2017 which utilized happinometer as a tool to measure 9 dimensions of happy scores; and the data were analyzed by using multiple logistic regression and adjusted odds ratio. As for the results, there were 82,449 individuals responded to the survey: 5.1% doctors, 3.3% dentists, 84.9% nurses and 6.7% pharmacists. The mean age range was 33.8-39.4 years. Average of happinometer score is 62.9. The highest score was the happy soul, and the lowest one was work life balance. The engagement score was 63.0. Nurses were found to have lowest happiness score, but highest level of engagement score. Workplace, gender, age group, careers, position and income were significantly associated with average of happinometer score. Happiness of nurse was related to their love in providing care to save lives of the patients. Data from the survey indicated that people of generation X and Y would be the majority of public health staff; and their main interest would be the sufficiency of income. Thus, support for increment of income should be a main strategy for human resource retention in the future.