What is a reasonable length of employment for health workers in Australian rural and remote primary healthcare services?

Conclusions. Workforce-retention benchmarks that differ according to geographic location and profession can be empirically derived, facilitating opportunities for managers to improve retention performance and reduce the high costs of staff replacement. What is known about the topic? Health services located in small rural and remote locations are likely to continue to experience workforce shortages and high costs of recruitment. Health workforce retention is therefore crucial. However, effective rural health workforce planning and use of strategies to maximise retention of existing health workers is hindered by inadequate knowledge about baseline employment-retention patterns. What does this paper add? Differences in health worker retention patterns by geographic location and profession are most evident after the first 6 months through until the end of the second year of employment. Health worker-retention benchmarks that differ according to geographic location and profession are proposed. What are the implications for practitioners? Benchmarking workforce retention in comparable health services can enable identification of best practice and the underpinning retention strategies. Workforce planners can use this, together with knowledge of baseline retention patterns and the high cost of staff replacement, to guide the design, timing and implementation of cost-neutral retention strategies. PMID: 23497824 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research