An evaluation of motivation of public health workers for effective work performance : a case study of university teaching hospital

Background: Motivation is a driver to worker performance in most of the organisation, through motivation management creates “will to work” which is necessary for the achievement of organizational goals. The issue of employee dissatisfaction and related attitude towards work is assuming alarming rate worldwide. The situation is even more serious in developing countries where working conditions are unattractive. In Zambia, despite the MoH acknowledging under performance of health professionals in the country through ZNPHI there has been limited data and strategies to evaluate the influence of motivation on health workforce performance. Objective: The focus of this study was to evaluate the influence of motivation and identify how intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors affect the work performance of health workers at UTH. Methods: A mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative) was adopted for the study, and stratified random sampling was used. A sample of 130 health workers under Clinic-care Dept was selected from a population of 600 using Cochran’s Model. Close ended questionnaires were adopted to collect data from the staff at UTH. A thematic content analysis and SPSS version 16 were used to analyze qualitative and quantitative data respectively. Results: Key findings from the study revealed that training and development, supervision and achievement are intrinsic motivating factors that affect the health worker performance; extrinsic factors such as promotions and recognition also impact health workers performance. Furthermore, access to financial loan facilities with relatively low interest rates is a motivator among health professionals. Conclusion: It is recommended that UTH Management and the Ministry of Health (MoH) adopt motivational policies based on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational blocks