Mobility and Factors Affecting Turn Over of Public Health Workers from Health Centers - การย้ายและปัจจัยที่ส่งผลต่อการย้ายออกจากสถานีอนามัยของบุคลากรสาธารณสุข

Abstract

           The study was aimed at assessing the mobility situation of public health workers and factors affecting their mobility while eliciting measures to retain public health workers in rural health centers. The cross-sectional survey was carried out in 8 provinces, 2 provinces from each region. Sample size comprised 1,820 public health workers who graduated with certificate in public health and was posted at health centers after graduation. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The results showed that high transfer rate of the public health workers was found during the early years in services, particularly during the first 1-5 years in services and the mobility was mainly within health centers. The turn over from health centers was slightly higher than the transfer from other work places to health centers. Main reasons driving the turn over were: high workload, family circumstance, career advancement, financial incentive. Logistic regression showed that factors found associating with turn over from health centers were: length of years in services (p < 0.001), educational accomplishment (p 0.001) and hometown background (p 0.036). The results suggested that the Ministry of Public Health should implement measures to motivate public health workers to increase their productivity as well as job satisfaction. The measures include: increase number of health center staffers to cope with workload, support local recruitment of public health workers, develop career advancement, increase socials recognition of public health workers, and increase financial incentives.

Key words: public health workers, mobility, turn over, health centers, incentive measures