Determining the relative salience of recognised push variables on health professional decisions to leave the UK National Health Service (NHS) using the method of paired comparisons

Objective: The primary and secondary impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic are claimed to have had a detrimental impact on health professional retention within the UK National Health Service (NHS). This study set out to identify priorities for intervention by scaling the relative importance of widely cited push (leave) influences.

Design: During Summer/Autumn 2021, a UK-wide opportunity sample (n=1958) of NHS health professionals completed an online paired-comparisons exercise to determine the relative salience of work-related stress, workload intensity, time pressure, staffing levels, working hours, work–homelife balance, recognition of effort and pay as reasons why health professionals leave NHS employment.

Setting: The study is believed to be the first large-scale systematic assessment of factors driving staff exits from the NHS since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: All professions gave primacy to work-related stress, workload intensity and staffing levels. Pay was typically located around the midpoint of the respective scales; recognition of effort and working hours were ranked lowest. However, differences were apparent in the rank order and relative weighting of push variables between health professions and care delivery functions. Ambulance paramedics present as an outlier, notably with respect to staffing level (F-stat 4.47, p=0.004) and the primacy of work–homelife balance. Relative to staffing level, other push variables exert a stronger influence on paramedics than nurses or doctors (f 4.29, p=0.006).

Conclusion: Findings are relevant to future NHS health professional retention intervention strategy. Excepting paramedics/ambulance services, rankings of leave variables across the different health professional families and organisation types exhibit strong alignment at the ordinal level. However, demographic differences in the weightings and rankings, ascribed to push factors by professional family and organisation type, suggests that, in addition to signposting universal (all-staff) priorities for intervention, bespoke solutions for different professions and functions may be needed.