Determinants of Health Care Workers Turnover in Private Health Facilities: The case of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

Turnover intention is defined as a conscious and deliberate willingness to leave an organization. However, employees who are committed to the organization internalize the organizational goals. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent of organizational commitment and how this may support or hinder a range of job satisfaction of health workers engaged in the Addis Ababa private health facilities. The research approaches employed for this research was quantitative approach. The study population of this study was all health workers employed in private health facilities in Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. To this end, one hundred health professionals were selected from forty-five health facilities using simple random sampling technique and participated in the study. The researcher collected the relevant data from health workers using job satisfaction survey tools (JSS) and Meyer and Allen’s (1990) organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ). The researcher analyzed the data using mean, standard deviation, correlation analysis, Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test. The result showed that there was evidence of positive correlation between health workers job satisfaction and their organizational commitment in the sampled health facilities. Regardless of this, the findings of the study revealed that gender was the only demographic variable that had significant positive relationship with job satisfaction. The other demographic variables such as age, marital status and level of education did not show significant relationship with health workers job satisfaction in the sampled clinics and hospitals. Consequently, up on this finding it was concluded that clinics and hospitals can enhance the level of health professional’s organizational commitment by creating a more satisfying working environment. As to the demographic variable, since some of the finding contradicts with the existing literature, we need to undertake more studies to have better understanding of the nature of the relationship between health worker’s demographic variables, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in developing countries context.