Evaluation of the main human resources in the health care institutions

Aim of the study: To evaluate the main human resources’ status in the health care institutions in support of their policy-making need to change. Objectives: To evaluate demographic situation of Lithuanian physicians and regional inequalities in the distribution of physicians; to assess the risk profile of chronic noncommunicable diseases of hospital-employed physicians; to analyse participation of hospital-employed physicians in screening programmes. Material and methods. The official statistical data obtained from Lithuanian Health Information Centre, Lithuanian Department of Statistics and the State Health Care Accreditation Agency under the Ministry of Health were used for evaluation of demographic situation of physicians and their regional distribution. The assessment of health status of physicians was carried out in four randomly selected hospitals from Vilnius and Kaunas regions. Two hospitals were selected from Vilnius and Kaunas cities, one hospital - from Ukmergė municipality and one hospital - from Marijampolė municipality. The questionnaire, which was distributed to physicians, consisted from six parts: I - personal data, and working activities, II - job satisfaction, III – health status, IV - preventive health check-up, V – health behaviours, and VI - opinion of health care. All physicians who were working in the hospital on the day of survey were invited to participate. Questionnaires were filled in by 281 physicians (response rate was 76%), and 242 physicians (65%) participated in health examination. The health examination included measurement of arterial blood pressure, examination of cholesterol level in the blood and anthropometric measurements. Results. The number of physicians per 10 000 population was nearly two times higher in Vilnius and Kaunas regions than in Šiauliai, Panevėžys and Klaipėda regions. Every tenth physician was older than 64 years of age and their proportion in regions was twice bigger than in cities. The majority of physicians (60.3% of men and 68.6% of women) assessed their health as good. Cardiovascular diseases were the most prevalent among physicians (16.2% among men and 18.2% among women). Arterial hypertension was diagnosed for 48.3% of physicians, hypercholesterolemia – for 75.3%, overweight – for 31.8% and obesity – for 18.7%. Almost every tenth physician (9.8%) smoked daily and 26.6% consumed alcoholic beverages at least once a week. The majority of physicians were registered to family doctor (87% of men and 96.6% of women). More than half (64.4%) of physicians underwent the health examination during the last year. The physicians participated actively in breast, cervical and prostate cancer screening programmes; however, only 7.3% of men and 21.5% of women aged 50-75 years were involved in colon cancer screening programme. Conclusions. The distribution of physicians was very unequal in Lithuania: The number of physicians per 10 000 population was 2-5 times bigger in cities than in regions., there are twice more physicians of retirement age in regions than in cities. The health staus of physicians is not good and NCD risk profile is high among them. The study results justified the need of changes in human resourses’ policy making in order to reduce regional inequalities in the distribution of physicians and to improve their health status