Motivación por el servicio público de los profesionales de los centros de atención primaria: ¿qué es más importante el entorno o el apoyo directivo?

OBJECTIVE: Explain the Public Service Motivation of health professionals based on (a) the social environment of their workplace and (b) the perceived supervisor support. DESIGN: Observational, cross-sectional, quantitative, retrospective, and uncontrolled study. SETTING: Forty primary care centers belonging to the Gran Canaria health area, primary care. PARTICIPANTS: Six hundred and five health professionals from primary care centers. 46% doctors and 54% nurses. Non-probability convenience sampling with a response rate of 53.3%. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: The dependent variable is the Public Service Motivation of health professionals. The independent variables are the social environment of the primary care centers and the perceived supervisor support. Data were analyzed using multilevel linear regression and multiple linear regression. RESULTS: The following variables of the environment of the healthcare centers: income of the population, percentage of people older than 65 years, and the amount of population assigned to the centers, do not influence the Public Service Motivation of health professionals. On the contrary, the support they receive from their superiors does have a significant impact on both the compassion factor (β: 0.38; CI: 0.21–0.32) and the commitment to the public interest (β: 0.37; CI: 0.20–0.31). CONCLUSIONS: The perceived supervisor support has a significant influence on the Public Service Motivation of health professionals. However, the social environment does not affect this type of motivation.