Work morale of public health personnel at Health Center in Krabi Province

This cross-sectional descriptive survey had the objectives to find the level of work morale in health center staff in Krabi province; to find the relationship between the level of work morale and the subjects’ personal factors; and to find the differences between the work morale with different subjects’ personal factors. The target group was the consensus sample size (year 2007-2008) of 241 health center staff in the province. The research tool was the self-administered questionnaire which gained both content validity and reliability values. Data collection was during February to April 2008. Returned questionnaires were 215 copies accounting for 89.21% response rate. Data analysis was done by SPSS V.13. Frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation, were employed for descriptive statistics; Chisquare for relationship test; and post-hoc comparison was done by mean value with T-test and F-test. The research found that majority of the subjects were female (67.4%) with an average age of 34.44 years, married (61.9%) with Bachelor’s degree (74.9%). Most of them (71.6%) worked in health centers as government officers (79.1%) which could be broken down into 28.4% registered nurse, 27.4% community health officer, 24.2% public health administrator, 17.2% technical public health officer, and 2.8% dental community health officer. Their service time was less than 10 years (48.4%), with an average household monthly income of 33,000 baht per subject. Overall, the subjects’ level of work morale was moderate. When taking into consideration each aspect of work morale, the aspect of relationship with peers had work morale on the high level, all other aspects’ level were only moderate. On the other hand, the aspect with the lowest level of work morale was household economic status. In terms of relationship analysis between personal factors and the level of work morale, it found that only household monthly income variable had the relationship with the level of work morale at 0.05 level of statistical significance, the rest were not significant. Regarding the post-hoc comparison between the work morale and the subjects’ personal factors, it found that only household monthly income had the differences with the work morale at 0.05 level of statistical significance. Information gained from an open-ended question part of the questionnaire showed that the executives should look into the salary/wages and other types of welfare in order to assist the living standard of health center staff. More manpower at the health centers to match with an increased work load was also requested. Based on this study result, recommendation on the policy level is that the patients’ good health outcome should be emphasized which can be derived from a variety of elements. These elements cover the high level of work morale in health center staff, the high level of happiness in work of the staff, and consequently, the high level of patients’ satisfaction in the services provided. Community participation should be an integral part of this process with 360 degrees feedback in order to achieve good health outcomes. As for future research, certain indicators of good health outcome should also be identified.