AUTHOR=Chen Yuquan , You Yanwei , Shen Yaying , Du Zifei , Dai Tao 

TITLE=Village doctors' dilemma in China: A systematic evaluation of job burnout and turnover intention

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.970780

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.970780

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Background: Village doctors(VDs) in China had undertaken arduous primary health care missions. However, compared with doctors in urban public secondary and tertiary hospitals, the attention to them was relatively slight. It is urgent to explore the overall situation of VDs' turnover intention and job burnout in order to evaluate and adjust the current health manpower policy.
Methods: This study systematically searched 7 databases such as PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and evaluated the empirical research on job burnout and turnover intention of VDs published in global publications. We evaluated the prevalence of job burnout among VDs in general, all dimensions and different severity, as well as the scores of each category. For turnover intention, we assessed the prevalence of different groups and the overall situation, and identified the significant contributors.
Results: In this study, we integrated 20 research evidences on job satisfaction of 23,284 VDs covering almost all provinces of China, and the prevalence of turnover intention among VDs in China was up to 44.1%(95% CI: 34.1% ~ 54.2%), which was 2 ~ 4 times that of primary health workers in high-income countries. Simultaneously, VDs with higher risks of turnover intention were male ones, those with monthly income below 163.4 USD, those with high educational level and below 40 years old. Similarly, the detection rate of job burnout towards them was 59.8% (95% CI: 38.7% ~ 79.1%), and the score of MBI series was 44.44 (95% CI: 37.02 ~ 51.86), while the detection rate of job burnout in moderate and above reached nearly 20%. The most significant contributors that affect the job burnout was low personal accomplishment,and the detection rate of moderate severity and above was 65.2% (95% CI: 58.7%~71.7%).
Conclusion: Attention should be paid to the high turnover intention and serious job burnout of primary health workers in rural areas of developing countries, and targeted measures should be taken to improve the situation. Health policy makers should increase financial subsidies for VDs, reasonably set the workload, improve various health policies such as VDs' pension insurance so as to enrich and expand the team of them.