Healthcare Providers’ Motivation Status and Its Associated Factors in Ethiopia: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Strong work motivation plays a vital role in retaining healthcare providers, ensuring the provision of quality health services, and improving patient outcomes. To effectively motivate healthcare professionals, it is necessary for health sectors and other stakeholders to evaluate the overall motivation of health workers and the factors that contribute to it. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate the overall levels of work motivation amongst healthcare providers in Ethiopia and the factors associated with it. This review only included articles that were published in English. The main databases included Medline/PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EMBASE and CINAHL, Scopus, Ethiopian University Repository Online, and Cochrane Library. The review included cross-sectional studies and met the inclusion criteria. The overall health workers’ motivational level was assessed using a random effects model. Furthermore, publication bias was evaluated using funnel plots and Egger’s test. STATA 14 was used for conducting all statistical analyses. Meta-analysis was done to identify factors that affected healthcare providers’ work motivation. This review analysed 16 studies that included 5,650 participants. It was found that 47.29% (95% confidence interval [39.74; 54.83]; I2 = 97.30%, P < 0.001) of healthcare providers were motivated by their work. Factors influencing motivation included supervision, resource provision, career development opportunities, experience, educational qualifications, and job satisfaction. In addition, subgroup analysis revealed that the Sidama region had the highest level of work motivation at 64%, while the Southern Ethiopia region reported the lowest level at 19.5%. Overall, only 47% of the participants reported feeling motivated in their work. As a result, national and regional governments, as well as other relevant stakeholders, must take swift action to boost the motivation of healthcare providers and tackle the factors that have been identified.