Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9SH, UK.
J Public Health (Oxf). 2013 Mar;35(1):164-70. doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fds066. Epub 2012 Aug 21.
Recruitment and retention of health workers is a major concern. Policy initiatives emphasize financial incentives, despite mixed evidence of their effectiveness. Qualitative studies suggest that nurses especially may be more driven by altruistic motivations, but quantitative research has overlooked such values. This paper adds to the literature through characterizing the nature and determinants of nurses' altruism, based on a cross-country quantitative study.
An experimental 'dictator game' was undertaken with 1064 final year nursing students in Kenya, South Africa and Thailand between April 2007 and July 2008. This presents participants with a real financial endowment to split between themselves and another student, a patient or a poor person. Giving a greater share of this financial endowment to the other person is interpreted as reflecting greater altruism.
Nursing students gave over 30% of their initial endowment to others (compared with 10% in similar experiments undertaken in other samples). Respondents in all three countries showed greater generosity to patients and the poor than to fellow students.
Consideration needs to be given to how to appeal to altruistic values as an alternative strategy to encourage nurses to enter the profession and remain, such as designing recruitment strategies to increase recruitment of altruistic individuals who are more likely to remain in the profession.
卫生工作者的招聘和留用是一个主要关注点。尽管有混合证据表明经济激励措施的有效性，但政策举措仍强调经济激励措施。定性研究表明，护士可能更受利他动机的驱动，但定量研究却忽略了这些价值观。本文通过对肯尼亚、南非和泰国的 1064 名护理专业最后一年学生进行跨国定量研究，从描述护士利他主义的性质和决定因素方面丰富了文献。
2007 年 4 月至 2008 年 7 月期间，对肯尼亚、南非和泰国的 1064 名护理专业最后一年的学生进行了一项实验性的“独裁者博弈”。在这个实验中，参与者会收到一笔真实的财务分配，可以在自己和另一名学生、一名患者或一名穷人之间分配。将这笔财务分配的更大份额给另一个人，就被解释为反映出更大的利他主义。
护理专业的学生将他们初始分配的 30%以上给了其他人（而在其他样本中进行的类似实验中，学生只给了 10%）。在这三个国家的受访者中，对患者和穷人的慷慨程度都高于对同学的慷慨程度。
需要考虑如何将利他主义价值观作为一种替代策略来鼓励护士进入该行业并留下来，例如设计招聘策略来增加可能更愿意留在该行业的利他主义个体的招聘。
