Global Insights Into Rural Health Workers' Job Satisfaction: A Scientometric Perspective

Rural health workers (RHWs) play an irreplaceable role in ensuring and improving the health level of rural residents as the most basic and extensive medical service providers in rural areas. However, rural health institutions are facing significant worker shortages worldwide, not only in low- and middle-income countries but also in developed countries. As an important variable to explain RHWs' work status and predict turnover behavior, job satisfaction has received more and more attention currently.

Publications from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2021 were identified from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) of the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC); CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and R software were applied to conduct this study.

A total of 251 publications were obtained from the WoSCC database. The number of publications had a statistically significant increase in the study period. Ranking in the top three of the most productive countries or regions in this field was the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. "Health Care Sciences & Services," "Nursing," and "Public, Environmental & Occupational Health" seemed to be the major subjects. According to the reference co-citation analysis, "motivation," "rural and remote areas," and "work environment" were three noteworthy topics during the development of the research field. Moreover, through the keyword analysis, the underlying relationship among "job satisfaction," "job burnout," and "turnover intention" was explored.

Publications about job satisfaction associated with RHWs had remarkably indicated that this research field had great development potential and broad prospects. As an emerging topic related to RHWs' job status, job satisfaction and its related affected factors were systematically summarized by cluster and keywords analysis. We also highlighted that job satisfaction had a negative predictive effect on RHWs' job burnout and turnover intention, and job burnout played a positive role in predicting turnover intention. In addition, the job satisfaction and working environment of RHWs under the COVID-19 pandemic should receive more attention in the future.