Journal article
Adverse working conditions in Romanian out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC): an interview study
Human Resources for Health, Vol.23(1), pp.1-14
2025
PMCID: PMC12305958
PMID: 40731407
Abstract
Background
Adverse working conditions in Romanian out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC) are a growing concern due to the shortage of healthcare professionals, outmigration, and inadequate measures to address the retirement of family doctors. This has led to significant fluctuations in the number of OOH-PC centres across the country. To address the existing knowledge gaps regarding the OOH-PC services, this study aimed to explore the challenges faced by healthcare workers in after-hours care.
Methods
A qualitative approach was used to gather insights from 14 healthcare professionals, including family doctors, nurses, representatives of professional associations, emergency doctors, and paediatricians. Through thematically analyzed in-depth semi-structured interviews, the researchers examined the working conditions in OOH-PC in Romania from the perspective of healthcare workers.
Results
Data analysis yielded five key themes related to adverse working conditions in OOH-PC: working hours and shift length, increasing workload and patient influx, obstacles to achieving work–life balance, inconveniences related to OOH center premises (rest space, security), and insufficient financial compensation for after-hours health service provision.
Conclusions
In the context of systemic changes in the Romanian health system, this article provides valuable information on the current working conditions of primary care health workers in OOH care. It highlights the importance of improving working conditions to attract and retain healthcare professionals in OOH-PC.
Details
- Title
- Adverse working conditions in Romanian out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC): an interview study
- Authors
- Simona Ciotlăuș (Corresponding Author) - Babeș-Bolyai UniversityMarius Ionuț Ungureanu - Babeș-Bolyai UniversityFlorin Oprescu - University of the Sunshine Coast
- Publication details
- Human Resources for Health, Vol.23(1), pp.1-14
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12960-025-00985-6
- ISSN
- 1478-4491
- PMID
- 40731407; PMC12305958
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- Data is provided within the manuscript or supplementary information files.
- Grant note
- University grant for Scientific Research, 2022-2023 / Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
- Organisation Unit
- Engage Research Lab; School of Health - Public Health
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991148434002621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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