Motivation and retention of health workers in deprived districts in Ghana: A Study of Kassena-Nankana East District

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Date
2011
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Abstract
Motivation and retention of health workers especially in rural areas have become topical issues for health managers in developing countries like Ghana. The situation in the upper east region and the study area in particular is very critical hence, the need to undertake this present research to come out with findings that can assist health managers to effectively address the issue of motivation and retention. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative methods in the study. The quantitative data was analysed using SPSS Version 16.0 software. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and chi-square tests were used to analyse the quantitative data. Various hypotheses were tested for significant relationships using chi-square and correlations tests. The qualitative data were analysed according to themes and discussed alongside the quantitative data. The two-tailed Pearson correlation analysis indicated significant positive association between staff willingness to work in health facilities in the district and key variables (staff happiness at the work side, managerial support for staff welfare issues, availability of basic medical supplies to work with and availability of good residential accommodation). The association between staff motivation to work hard and key variables was also confirmed as statistically significant using the two statistical techniques above. Chi-squared analysis confirmed the statistical significance of this association thus ensuring that the research findings were authentic. The focus group discussion and the open-ended questions revealed that both financial and non-financial incentives serve as motivation for health workers with the non-financial factors dominating. Overall, the findings from this study suggest that to motivate and retain health workers in the Kassena-Nankana East District health managers should use both financial and non-financial incentives.
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A Thesis submitted to the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Commonwealth Executive Masters in Business Administration,.
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