Occupational Medicine Advance Access published online on January 7, 2009
Occupational Medicine, doi:10.1093/occmed/kqn173
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Short Report |
Attitudes to job turnover among Finnish anaesthetists
1 Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital, PO Box 340, 00029 HUS, Helsinki, Finland
2 Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital, PO Box 281, 00029 HUS, Helsinki, Finland
3 Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland
4 National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, PO Box 220, 00531 Helsinki, Finland
Background Structural changes have led to higher workload and more frequent conflicts among hospital staff, which in turn has been shown to be associated with increased employee turnover.
Aims To study the willingness of anaesthetists to change their employment and factors associated with it. Work-related, individual and family-related factors were investigated as potential influences on such willingness.
Method A postal questionnaire was sent to all working Finnish anaesthetists (N = 550).
Results The response rate was 60%; 175 (53% of responders) were men. Of the respondents, 31% were willing to consider changing to another physician's job and 43% to a profession other than medicine. The most important correlates for these views were conflicts with superiors (odds ratio 6.1; 95% confidence interval 2.1–17.7) and co-workers (4.2; 1.4–12.2), low job control (2.6; 1.4–4.9), a sense of organizational injustice (2.4; 1.3–4.6), stress (6.5; 2.6–16.3) and job dissatisfaction (4.6; 2.4–8.8).
Conclusions The establishment of respect, trust and genuine dialogue between co-workers and superiors is needed to minimize the risk of loss of members of this occupational group.
Keywords Anaesthesiologist; anaesthetists; job control; job turnover; occupational conflicts
Correspondence to: Pirjo Lindfors, Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital, PO Box 340, 00029 HUS, Helsinki, Finland. Tel: +358 40 723 90 89; e-mail: pirjo.lindfors{at}kolumbus.fi