229102 Improving Hospital Workers' Willingness to Work: Using Group-Specific Differences to Investigate Associations between Barriers and Interventions

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Yoon Soo Park, MS , National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY
Laudan Behrouz, MPH , Center for Public Health Preparedness, Columbia University, New York, NY
Tasha Stehling-Ariza, MPH , National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University, New York, NY
Krystin Burnette , Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY
Jonathan J. Sury, MPH, CPH , National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University, New York, NY
Background/Purpose: In any disaster involving contamination or a contagion, there is great likelihood for deviations in the healthcare workforce's willingness to work as demonstrated in the ongoing H1N1 crisis and in the previous avian flu outbreaks. As such, it is important to assess barriers that prevent hospital workers from coming to work and examine which interventions can improve their willingness to work. This study refines previous research conducted by Garrett et al. (2009), which explored mechanisms by which certain barriers may be realistically mitigated in order to maintain the infrastructure of the healthcare sector.

Methods: In the study, a convenience sample of healthcare workers in 5 large urban healthcare facilities in the state of New York was surveyed online (n=2,864). This current study focuses on group-specific factors influencing hospital workers' willingness to work using a multilevel regression model that includes type of hospital, job role, family characteristics, distance from residence to hospital, and socioeconomic factors.

Results/Outcomes: Unadjusted results indicated the greatest barriers were family and personal safety concerns, followed by dependent care and transportation issues. Interventions including antiviral prophylaxis or personal protective equipment for the employee, as well as their immediate family, had the greatest mitigating effect.

Conclusion: The adjusted analyses show significant variability in the barriers to work and interventions, calling for policy recommendations that are more specific to individual and group differences.

Learning Objectives:
- Identify group-specific differences that examines barriers that prevent workers from coming to work during a disaster. - Examine effects of interventions that will alter hospital workers' willingness to work when controlling for type of hospital, job role, family characteristics, distance from residence to hospital, and socioeconomic factors.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a doctoral candidate in Measurement and Statistics at Columbia University and a Data Manager/Analyst at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness that collected the data and conducted the primary analysis used for this study. I am a coauthor of Garrett et al. (2009) that published the first analysis of hospital workers' willingness to work that prompted the secondary analysis used in this study.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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