Abstract
Turnover of healthcare professionals’ is a rapidly growing human resource issue that affects healthcare systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals have faced stressful situations that have negatively impacted their psychological health. In this study, we explored impacts of the emotional wellbeing of healthcare professionals on their intention to quit their jobs. A cross-sectional survey design was used for this study. The respondents were selected based on simple random sampling. In total, 345 questionaries were returned and used for the analysis. Respondents were healthcare professionals (nurses, doctors, midwives, technicians, etc.) working in a pandemic hospital in Turkey. A multivariable logistic regression model was used to predict the emotions that encouraged the respondents to intend to quit their jobs. Emotions including anxiety, burnout, and depression were measured using validated scales. We found that the COVID-19 situation increased the turnover intention, especially among doctors and nurses (ORnurse/midwife = 22.28 (2.78–41.25), p = 0.01; ORdoctors = 18.13 (2.22–2.27), p = 0.01) mediating the emotional pressure it was putting them under. Anxiety related to work-pressure and burnout especially were the main emotional predictors of turnover intention. The more severe the anxiety was, the more the professional considered quitting (ORmoderate = 18.96 (6.75–137.69), p = 0.005; ORsevere = 37.94 (2.46–107.40), p = 0.016). Only severe burnout, however, engendered such an intention among them (ORsevere = 13.05 (1.10–33.48), p = 0.000).
Highlights
Research indicates that the emotional exhaustion and psychological health of healthcare professionals plays an important role in organizational outcomes and performance and job attitudes [2]
We investigated, in this study, psychological health as a predictor of intention to leave the job among healthcare professionals who were actively working during the COVID-19 pandemic
One of them is the BAI, known as the Beck Anxiety Inventory. It focuses on somatic symptoms of anxiety that were developed as a measure adept at discriminating between anxiety and depression [20]
Summary
Healthcare professionals’ turnover is a worldwide rapid-growing human resource issue that is affecting healthcare systems. The COVID-19 pandemic forced doctors to work under stressful situations, as they were facing the threat of death and contagion and taking responsibility for saving the lives of their patients with insufficient resources. As in pandemic situations more healthcare resources are needed, it remains of great importance that we prevent active professionals from quitting their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in future crises that can harm the healthcare system. For these reasons, we investigated, in this study, psychological health as a predictor of intention to leave the job among healthcare professionals who were actively working during the COVID-19 pandemic
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