Staff retention and job satisfaction at a hospital clinic - a case study

Paper in proceeding, 2004

In this study system dynamics has been used to explore staff retention and job satisfaction at a maternity department, which was in an unfavourable spiral of attrition after an expansion period. This raised the issue about how to stop this downward spiral. To understand and explore this a causal loop diagram and a system dynamics model were developed, integrating factors of attrition and hiring rates, workload and qualitative contents of the work. The causal loop diagram shows an unbalanced system, which may spiral favourably or unfavourably after a relatively small disturbance. The system dynamics model shows that an unfavourable spiral may be reversed by qualitative interventions. The conclusions are that system dynamics is an interesting method, which may increase the understanding of the factors determining staff retention, job satisfaction and work pressure in a hospital setting. There is need for further examination of the qualitative factors incorporated in the model.