News
Work-life balance, job satisfaction keys to retaining health staff
Thursday March 20, 2025
- 25,752 practitioners completed the stay or leave survey
- Males are nearly twice as likely to leave as females
- The replacement rate is on a downward trend
Mental burnout is the key reason medical professionals across a range of disciplines are deciding to abandon their careers in healthcare, according to new research led by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra).
The Australian Workforce Retention and Attrition Project (WRAP) aimed to bridge a gap in understanding the factors that influence practitioners to stay or leave their profession.
The researchers focused on people in nine regulated health professions: Chinese medicine, chiropractic, dental, medical radiation practice, occupational therapy, optometry, osteopathy, paramedicine and podiatry.
They did an analysis of 10 years of (Ahpra) registration data to support the research and prepared a detailed online survey of professionals in those fields of practice.
The registration data showed the number of registered practitioners per 100,000 population had increased by 29.6% from 2014 to 2023, but the replacement rate showed notable ups and downs over the same period, highlighting concerns about workforce stability. Females consistently had higher replacement rates than males.
Of the 145,120 WRAP survey invitations sent out, 25,752 practitioners completed the survey in full (a 17.7% response rate).
The results revealed that 20,449 (79.4%) of the surveyed health practitioners intended to stay in the job, 1,368 (5.3%) intended to leave, and 1759 (6.8%) were unsure about what they would do. Most intending to leave planned to do so immediately or within a year (72.8%).
The top reasons for leaving the job included mental burnout (32.9%), feeling undervalued or unrecognised (28.5%), a lack of professional satisfaction (27.9%), and the work being no longer fulfilling (25.1%).
Age and gender were significant influences on survey respondents’ intentions. Males were nearly twice as likely to leave compared with females. Practitioners over 60, most looking to retire, were nearly three times more likely to leave than those aged 35–60 but only twice as likely as those under 35.
The research findings, “Trends in retention and attrition in nine regulated health professions in Australia”, is available as an open access paper from www.publish.csiro.au/ah/fulltext/AH24268.
