Recruitment and retention issues for occupational therapists in mental health: balancing the pull and the push

Recruitment and retention issues for mental health occupational therapists have been the subject of significant concern for many years. This paper describes recruitment and retention issues as reported by mental health occupational therapists employed by a large Area Health Service in metropolitan Sydney.

Thirty-eight mental health occupational therapists (response rate 84%) completed a survey in the first half of 2008. Key themes investigated were: overall satisfaction; attractive elements of positions; positive aspects of positions; constraints of positions; factors associated with leaving positions; supervision; professional development; career pathways; and interest in and access to management positions.

Key elements that kept respondents in positions included the nature of the work, being in a supportive team and the opportunity to use occupational therapy skills. Elements that prompted people to consider leaving positions were the desire for new and different types of work, a desire to work closer to home, insufficient time or high workloads, feeling 'bored' or 'stale', organisational change or juggling multiple demands, working in unsupportive or dysfunctional teams and family or other personal factors.

The results supported the development of a 'push and pull' conceptualization of recruitment and retention issues, including job-related (intrinsic) and non-job-related (extrinsic) issues. This conceptualization allows organisations to closely examine factors that attract practitioners to positions and those that support or damage staff tenure.