Abstract
BackgroundPrimary care providers are pillars of China’s medical and health sectors. However, due to the gap between career expectations and reality, they enter a career plateau phase through excessive pressure. This study aims to examine the prevalence and associated factors of the career plateau of primary care providers in Heilongjiang Province, China, and proposes strategies to improve and promote their career advancement.MethodsBased on city-level GDP growth in the province, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 1500 primary care providers (effective response rate = 85.8%). Pearson’s chi-square analysis and binary logistic regression were used to analyse the factors associated with their career plateau.ResultsThe prevalence rate of career plateau was 61.8% among primary care provider respondents. The factors associated with a career plateau included having a spouse (OR = 1.394, 95%CI = 1.056–1.839), working more than 40 h per week (OR = 1.473, 95%CI = 1.146–1.893); working for 11–20 years (OR = 1.607, 95%CI = 1.150–2.246); working for more than 20 years (OR = 2.818, 95%CI = 1.938–4.097); having an average monthly income of 3001–4000 yuan (OR = 1.886, 95%CI = 1.197–2.969) or 4001–5000 yuan (OR = 2.104, 95%CI = 1.256–3.524); and reporting unsatisfactory or very unsatisfactory sleep quality (OR = 1.838, 95%CI = 1.317–2.567).ConclusionsPrimary care providers in Heilongjiang Province face a high career plateau, with marital status, weekly working hours, number of years employed, monthly average income, and sleep quality considered associated factors. To eliminate negative factors of the career plateau, it is necessary to provide support to primary care providers in four domains: individual, organisation, society, and policy.
Highlights
Primary care providers are pillars of China’s medical and health sectors
Descriptive analysis of the score of career plateau The results showed that primary health care workers were in a career plateau state overall, with an overall plateau score of 4.07 ± 0.77
Associations between different demographic variables and career plateau The chi-square test results showed that the career plateau prevalence rate of primary care providers was 61.8% (796/1287)
Summary
Primary care providers are pillars of China’s medical and health sectors. due to the gap between career expectations and reality, they enter a career plateau phase through excessive pressure. This study aims to examine the prevalence and associated factors of the career plateau of primary care providers in Heilongjiang Province, China, and proposes strategies to improve and promote their career advancement. As providers of primary health services, community-level health service personnel assume multiple responsibilities of prevention, Liu et al BMC Family Practice (2021) 22:38 to their career development status, that is, career plateau, is clearly insufficient. Tremblay et al [17] indicated that the career plateau of employees is primarily associated with three major factors: individual, family, and organisation. In most studies [19,20,21,22], it is stated that gender, professional title, educational background, age, working years, working time, and marital status are related factors of career plateau. It is believed that the emergence of a career plateau is related to work performance, organisational commitment, turnover intention, and job satisfaction among employees [23,24,25], triggering psychological and physiological health issues in employees and reducing organisational management efficiency and work performance, resulting in a loss of organisational talent [26, 27]
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