Barriers to resilience among healthcare staff in Ireland in the post-austerity period

BACKGROUND: The health workforce is the motor of any health system. Although the focus of health systems has been on increasing the availability of health workers, less attention has been devoted to exploring the factors associated with the satisfaction/dissatisfaction of the existing workforce or how to improve it. Objective: To assess job satisfaction among Irish healthcare workers and to model the association between psychological, sociodemographic, and work-related factors and the satisfaction of the health staff. METHODOLOGY: A secondary data analysis and subgroup analysis were carried out utilising the data collected in the waves (2016, 2018) of the Irish Staff Survey “Your Opinion Counts”. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the baseline characteristics of the participants. Post-stratification weights were generated to decrease the bias associated with the representativeness of the sample. Ordinal logistic regression was utilised for determining associations between job satisfaction and work-related, sociodemographic, and psychological state variables. RESULTS: Just over half of the health staff were satisfied with their organisation (52.1%). At country and organisational levels, the communication within the organisation and the possibilities of training and career progression showed the greatest percentage of dissatisfaction within the participants. At the individual level, being a woman, experiencing bullying or discrimination, working in the National Ambulance Service or being a doctor/dentist were the variables highly correlated with dissatisfaction of health staff. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlighted the dissatisfaction experienced by many healthcare workers. Therefore, understanding and addressing their concerns is crucial for policy makers developing national strategies and knowledge-based interventions.