Health Worker Attitudes toward Rural Service in Liberia : Results from Qualitative Research
In Liberia, the maldistribution of health workers is particularly pronounced as 14 years of civil war exacerbated the concentration of experienced health workers in urban areas. The government has identified this challenge as a priority area for po...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2010/11/13150421/health-worker-attitudes-toward-rural-service-liberia-results-qualitative-research http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13598 |
| Summary: | In Liberia, the maldistribution of
health workers is particularly pronounced as 14 years of
civil war exacerbated the concentration of experienced
health workers in urban areas. The government has identified
this challenge as a priority area for policy intervention.
The objective of this study was to explore the drivers of
health workforce choice including job location. It presents
the results from preparatory qualitative research that fed
into the design of a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The
qualitative study interviewed 26 registered nurses,
midwives, and physician assistants about their current
working conditions, their job location preference, and
priority areas for change in working conditions. Content
analysis was used to analyze the data. The study shed light
on health worker job preferences and their working
conditions, and identified six job attributes that health
workers consider to be important when choosing a job. These
were pay, transport, availability of medical materials and
infrastructure, housing, workload, and further training
opportunities. These attributes were chosen because they
reflect the frequency to which they were cited during the
interviews and the extent to which they were amenable to
policy intervention. Associated attribute levels were chosen
for each attribute to reflect current work conditions and
the levels of change that will be necessary to trigger
changes in job choice. The relative weight of each of these
attributes in location choice has been quantitatively
determined through the follow-up DCE. Although the main aim
of this study was to feed into the DCE design, it
incidentally throws light on a wider variety of issues with
regard to health worker career choice, motivation, and performance. |
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