Retaining hospital workers: a rapid methodology to determine incentive packages

Area of Science:

• Health Workforce Management
• Health Services Research
• Human Resources for Health

Background:

• Increasing healthcare access requires not only training new health workers but also retaining existing ones.
• Health worker retention is a significant challenge in many healthcare systems globally.
• Effective retention strategies are essential for maintaining healthcare service delivery.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design a rapid retention survey tool for assessing health worker preferences.
• To utilize the discrete choice experiment (DCE) method for quantitative analysis of retention factors.
• To provide human resource managers with a tool to identify cost-effective incentives for health worker retention.

Main Methods:

• Development of a user-friendly survey tool based on the discrete choice experiment (DCE).
• Quantitative assessment of the relative importance health workers assign to employment characteristics.
• Application of DCE to determine factors influencing health workers' employment choices.

Main Results:

• The DCE method effectively quantifies health worker preferences for various job characteristics.
• The survey tool enables rapid assessment of retention preferences in different settings.
• Identifies key factors that can be leveraged to improve health worker retention.

Conclusions:

• The rapid retention survey tool offers an evidence-based approach to designing incentive packages.
• Findings can inform local and national policies to enhance health worker retention strategies.
• Optimizing retention incentives is key to improving healthcare access and service delivery.