Physicians intention to leave from malaysia government hospitals with existing retention strategy.

Abstract

Background: Healthcare professionals or physicians are important assets for health institutions in ensuring optimum delivery of healthcare to the people. Job satisfaction in various aspects including daily tasks, responsibilities and other duties will indirectly provide high productivity to an organization as well as ensuring a conducive working environment and reducing the resignation rates. Resignation rate trends among physicians in Malaysia ranged from 6.4% in 2000 to 3.5% in 2016. The introduction of Full Paying Patient services in Ministry of Health hospitals in 2007 somewhat contributed to the reduction in resignation rate of physicians. The purpose of this research is to assess this retention strategy implemented in Ministry of Health in achieving one of its objectives (to retain physicians). The assessment will help gain a better understanding of the complexities involved to assist policymakers in establishing good policies and guidelines to reduce the rate of resignation among physicians in the government hospitals and ultimately ensure a sustainable national health system. Methods: This is a cross sectional study involving simple randomly sampled physicians from the daily attendance list in pioneered Ministry of Health hospitals offering Full Paying Patient services. The study using quantitative methods in the form of structured questionnaires that are often used to measure the level of job satisfaction (Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire-short form). Results: Intention to leave found in 46.8% of respondents though the findings of this study do not statistically significant (p value of 0.437) which indicates that there are other factors involve. However, job satisfaction towards governance and work processes at workplace are turned out to be associated with intention to leave among physicians in Malaysia government hospitals (p value less than 0.05). monitoring of its effectiveness together with research on factors that motivate health workers in order to Conclusions: Full Paying Patient services must be accompanied by continuous assessment as well as adapt and adjust the benefit packages that sensitive towards the changing needs and desires of the workforce.

Conceptual Framework of Equity Sensitivity, Training and Promotion on Specialist Doctors Retention in Malaysia: Moderated by Organizational Trust

“…Studies on doctors' job satisfaction in Malaysia has reached a similar conclusion (Muhammad & Sharifah, 2020). Studies done by Omar et al, (2009) on government nurses, Jasmani et al, (2011) among physicians in National Heart Institute (IJN), Idris et al, (2014) on specialist doctors intent to leave public service, Aidalina and Aniza, (2015) on the physicians leaving public hospitals to private sector healthcare centers, Sharifah and Norwati, (2016) on family physicians in Malaysia and a more recent study by Muhammad and Sharifah, (2020) on physicians' intention to leave government hospitals identified job dissatisfaction to be the main contributor to employer's failure to retain physicians. The aforementioned studies in Malaysia identified pay, promotion, rewards and other personal factors to be the cause of job dissatisfaction among physicians.…”

“…Another study by Idris et al, (2014) from the Institute of Health Management reaffirmed that 30% of the medical specialists in government service intend to leave MoH facilities within 3 years. This is found to be persistently increasing in a recent study by Amir and Ezat, (2020), showing 46.8% of the specialist that responded to have intention to leave the government sector.…”

“…In the effort to identify factors that could increase retention, previous studies have relied on job satisfaction of physicians as the best predictor to intention to stay (Aman- Ullah et al, 2021;Yang, Saad, et al, 2021). Studies on doctors' job satisfaction in Malaysia has reached a similar conclusion (Muhammad & Sharifah, 2020). Studies done by Omar et al, (2009) on government nurses, Jasmani et al, (2011) among physicians in National Heart Institute (IJN), Idris et al, (2014) on specialist doctors intent to leave public service, Aidalina and Aniza, (2015) on the physicians leaving public hospitals to private sector healthcare centers, Sharifah and Norwati, (2016) on family physicians in Malaysia and a more recent study by Muhammad and Sharifah, (2020) on physicians' intention to leave government hospitals identified job dissatisfaction to be the main contributor to employer's failure to retain physicians.…”

“…The shortage of the highly skilled and experienced doctors of the public sector is a cause of concern as their expertise is crucial to train and develop new doctors and houseman in the government healthcare facilities. Loss of these specialists who are indispensable educators and trainers can reduce the capacity to provide quality training for new doctors (Muhammad & Sharifah, 2020). Further, in a service orientated industry such as healthcare that is highly dependent on the knowledge and skills of specialists not only in training new doctors, but also further advancing medical research and development of health services from within is largely hampered (Ahmed, 2021).…”

Overview of Retention Strategies for Medical Doctors in Low- and Middle-Income Countries and Their Effectiveness: Protocol for a Scoping Review

“…The phenomenon of HCWs resigning poses a significant obstacle to the advancement of the health care system in any given country, making it a topic of widespread concern [ 14 ]. The increasing number of resignations among HCWs, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, has been reported as the greatest threat to the development and sustainability of a resilient health care system in a recent study [ 15 ]. Despite efforts to increase supply and retain them, the workforce is still struggling to meet public health demands, as demonstrated in Spain and Brazil [ 16 ].…”