Assessment of Factors Affecting the Motivation of Doctors and Nurses in Five Selected Public Hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Employee motivation is important in predicting systems stability and reduce turnover. As motivation is defined as the willingness to exert and maintain effort towards attaining organizational goals, then well- functioning systems should seek to boost factors which predict motivation. In the past, the major factors associated with hospital worker motivation have been poorly understood and continued to be the major challenge of hospitals in developing countries. Designing a strategy that enables particularly developing countries particularly in Ethiopia in the planning of interventions in order to achieve maximum worker motivation is today’s concern since the attrition rate of doctors and nurses has been increasing from year to year. Objective: To assess the individual and organizational factors that affects the motivation of doctors and Nurses in five public hospitals at Addis Ababa, April 2012. Methods: A cross sectional facility based survey was conducted from 15-30 March 2012 to assess factors affecting the level of motivation of doctors and nurses in five public hospitals. 586 Sample size was determined by using population correction formula then; simple random sampling technique was used to select the five public hospitals from ten public hospitals. Data was collected using structured self administered questionnaire. Data was entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. Odds ratio and 95%CI were used to interpret the findings. Results: A total of 542 doctors and nurses were enrolled in the study making the response rate 92.4 %. The overall motivation level was 45%. The Study subjects working under Addis Ababa Health Bureau were more motivated than those working under Federal Hospitals (OR=3.4; 95%CI: 2.31-5.02). The Study subjects whose monthly income greater than 3000 Birr were found to be more motivated than those who earn less than 2500 Birr (OR=1.8; 95%CI: 1.02-3..04). Concerning the level of managerial position, those who had position were more motivated than those who had no position (OR=1.6; 95%CI: 1.03-2.49). The number one ranked motivational factors affecting motivation was Job Attributes with mean score 3.64(1.25) which was higher than all the others. Conclusion and Recommendation: In conclusion, this study revealed the motivation level to be 45% .On the other hand, The major factors that were affecting the motivation of doctors and nurese were place of work or hospital type, amount of income and level of managerial position. As a result, developing financial and non-financial incentive mechanisms is highly