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Turnover intention among service providers in Chinese methadone maintenance treatment clinics

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Abstract

Aim

High turnover rates among service providers have burdened addiction treatment clinics and affected patient care and treatment outcome. In this study, we identified factors associated with providers’ turnover intention in Chinese methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clinics.

Subjects and methods

This study used the baseline data from a randomized controlled trial conducted in 68 MMT clinics in five provinces in China. Service providers’ turnover intention, perceived risk at work, job satisfaction, years working in the clinic as well as sociodemographic characteristics were collected in the assessment. A logistic mixed-effects model was used to identify factors associated with providers’ turnover intention.

Results

Approximately one-third of these 418 service providers intended to change their job in this study. The findings of regression analysis showed that perceived risk at work was positively associated with the turnover intention (OR = 1.28; 95% CI: 1.17, 1.41) and job satisfaction was negatively related to the turnover intention (OR = 0.97; 95% CI: 0.95, 0.99).

Conclusion

Study findings highlighted the importance of addressing service providers’ perceived risk at work and job satisfaction to reduce turnover intention. Intervention strategies that focus on occupation safety and job satisfaction could be integrated into current training programs to maintain a stable workforce in the MMT programs.

Clinical trial registration details

This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov.

Registration date: January 4, 2013. Identifier: NCT01760720.

Link: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01760720

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the project team members in China for their contributions to this study.

Funding

Research reported in this paper was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (award number R01DA033130) and National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (award number P30MH058107).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

All authors contributed to the article and approved the final article. Jun Chen analyzed the data, interpreted the outcomes and wrote the article. Chunqing Lin participated in interpreting the outcomes and writing the article. Wei Cao assisted with summarizing the literature and writing the article. Zunyou Wu assisted with overseeing the implementation of the intervention trial. Li Li was responsible for conceptualizing and designing the whole study and writing this article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Li Li.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (the University of California Los Angeles and National Center for AIDS Prevention and Control, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Chen, J., Lin, C., Cao, W. et al. Turnover intention among service providers in Chinese methadone maintenance treatment clinics. J Public Health (Berl.) 29, 979–984 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-020-01211-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-020-01211-4

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