A study conducted in six selected districts in 2004 reported the following major causes of health professionals' attrition: death (48%), resignations (38%), and early retirement (9%) [ 29].
In-depth interviews with paediatric clinicians suggest that while most health professionals recognise attrition as a major issue, there is no consensus about how to manage it [ 25].
Some of the factors contributing to this include failure to recruit to trials, protective healthcare professionals and subsequent attrition from trials due to the death of the patients.
For the purposes of this paper, the author uses the term "wastage" to refer to the loss in utility of health workers/health professionals due to attrition or poor productivity that can be prevented or managed and that is over and above what is expected in normal work situations.
Due to limited consultation, it was suggested that the policy content did not adequately address key policy content issues such as management of staff attrition, general professional development, and progression matters.
For example, although it has been widely documented that movement of health workers from one job to another is a major problem affecting human resources for health globally [ 2], the CHA strategy did not comprehensively consider how to address staff attrition or professional development of CHAs.
In their study, professionals were disappointed about attrition and lack of long term weight change but also frustrated that families did not become 'independent' at the close of the programme.
It was presumed that huge patient inflow would necessitate employing a large number of healthcare professionals, thereby being an ideal platform for studying factors affecting attrition among healthcare professionals.
Nursing shortages exist worldwide while job stress, dissatisfaction, lack of peer support and limited professional opportunities still contribute to attrition.
The approach adopted is that turnover (attrition) among healthcare professionals is influenced by two dominant variables, the JS felt by the healthcare professionals and their intention to stay (ITS) in the job.
