Strategies Influencing Performance of Health Workers in Public Health Facilities in Wajir County, Kenya

Abstract

The healthcare workforce is at the heart of all efforts to improve health systems. The provision of health initiatives necessitates the use of qualified and well- supported medical staff. There have been serious shortages of health care workers such as doctors, clinicians, nurses, medical lab officers, nutritionists, etc. in Wajir County, preventing the delivery of important health services. While these shortages have been present for some time, they have been exacerbated by unsatisfactory performance. As a result, long-term plans for increased health worker performance must be developed and maintained in order to boost the current workforce's engagement, productivity, and supports. The study's overall goal was to determine the strategies that influence performance of health workers in public health facilities in Wajir County. The study specifically aimed to establish the extent to which standard-based performance, quality improvement guidelines, professional regulations and recognition systems influences performance of the health workers in public health facilities, in Wajir County. The research focused on several human behavioral theories and used a cross-sectional descriptive research approach to collect data from 130 healthcare workers through a self-administered questionnaire. The six sub- Counties were sampled using stratified sampling and simple random sampling procedures. Correlation analysis results showed that quality improvement guidelines, standard-based performance, recognition systems and professional regulations were positively correlated to performance of the health workers. Logistic regression analysis results showed that standard-based performance, recognition systems and professional regulations affected performance while quality improvement guidelines negatively influenced the performance. The study came to the conclusion that while professional regulations, a recognition system, and performance measured against standards are all positively associated with performance at the bivariate level, quality improvement guidelines are not. Additionally, performance that was based on standards, industry rules, and recognition programs improved it when it was integrated with other setups that took into account all the factors. Performance, nevertheless, was unaffected by the quality improvement recommendations method. The identification system was also the most important strategy in a combined setup, preceded by performance based on standards. It was recommended that the management at public health facilities should ensure that performance based standards are regularly updated, and used for clinical decision-making, they should ensure that employees constantly adhere to the set performance-based standards, the management should ensure there are adequate health workers reward systems for recognizing high performance, ensure there are financial rewards for recognizing high performance, the management at the facility and ministry of health in Wajir county should ensure there are clear quality improvement guidelines, roles and expectations adequate health workers education on quality improvement guidelines, ensure there are mechanisms for ensuring continuing competence, and there are mechanisms for amending scopes of practice in Professional Regulation