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Issues and challenges in recruitment for government doctors in Gujarat, India

Overview of attention for article published in Human Resources for Health, July 2016
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

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Title
Issues and challenges in recruitment for government doctors in Gujarat, India
Published in
Human Resources for Health, July 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12960-016-0140-9
Pubmed ID
Authors

Bhaskar Purohit, Tim Martineau

Abstract

India faces a critical shortage of government doctors in rural and underserved areas. Several measures have been introduced to address the shortage, but significant problems still remain. The main aim of the current research was to understand the existing recruitment-related policies and systems in place for government doctors in Gujarat and to identify issues that prevent effective recruitment of doctors that could have implications for doctors' shortage in the state. The research also aims to fill the knowledge gap in the existing literature on why recruitment in civil services is an important HR function to address the shortage of doctors. The study aimed at identifying the existing recruitment policies and practices for government Medical Officers (MOs) from Gujarat state in India. The analysis is based on document review to understand the existing policies, 19 in-depth interviews with MOs to understand the systems in place for recruitment of MOs, construction of job histories from interviews to understand various nuances in the recruitment system and five interviews with Key Informants to understand recruitment policies and their actual implementation. Thematic framework approach was used to analyse qualitative data using NVivo. While the state has general recruitment guidelines called the Recruitment Rules (RRs), these rules are very wide-ranging and fragmented. The MOs were neither briefed about them nor received copies of the rules at any time during the service suggesting that RRs were not transparent. The recruitment system was considered to be slow and very sporadic having possible implications for attraction and retention of MOs. The study results indicate several other system inefficiencies such as a long time taken by the health department to provide salary benefits and service regularization that has a negative effect over MOs' motivation. The study also found unequal opportunities presented to different categories of MOs in relation to job security, salary benefits and in recognizing their previous work experience leaving MOs unclear about their future thereby influencing the attraction and retention of MOs to government jobs negatively. If long-term solutions are to be sought, the health department needs to have an effective recruitment system in place with the aim to (1) address the slow and sporadic nature of the recruitment system (that is likely to attract more doctors and prevent loss of any doctors during recruitment) and (2) address the job insecurity issue that MOs have which also influences their other employment benefits such as salary, pension and recognition for the years of service they have given to the health department. Addressing these issues can improve motivation among doctors and prevent loss of doctors through voluntary turnover leading to better retention.

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X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 11 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 94 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 94 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 24 26%
Researcher 11 12%
Student > Ph. D. Student 10 11%
Student > Doctoral Student 6 6%
Student > Bachelor 5 5%
Other 11 12%
Unknown 27 29%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 17 18%
Social Sciences 9 10%
Business, Management and Accounting 8 9%
Nursing and Health Professions 8 9%
Psychology 5 5%
Other 16 17%
Unknown 31 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 9. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 January 2018.
All research outputs
#4,294,026
of 25,374,917 outputs
Outputs from Human Resources for Health
#501
of 1,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#72,970
of 377,264 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Resources for Health
#17
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,917 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 83rd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,261 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 60% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 377,264 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 45th percentile – i.e., 45% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.