The Relationship Between Healthcare Providers’ Motivation and Patients’ Outcomes in Hospital Departments

Abstract

Introduction: It is widely recognized that human resources are the most crucial factor in patients' outcomes. Prior studies have identified the determinants of patients' outcomes as hospital policies regarding all hospital staff, but no work has been done to identify the characteristics of healthcare providers that are beneficial to patients' outcomes. This study intended to fill that gap by examining the relationship between healthcare providers' motivation and patients' outcomes. The fundamental hypothesis guiding this study is that healthcare providers' motivation is an important determinant of the service they provide to patients and of the patients' postsurgical outcomes. The growing interest of practitioners and the academic community in the issues of motivation signals the existence of a connection between motivation and productivity. Because of that, theoretical discussions of motivation emphasize a positive association between motivation and outcomes. However, this hypothesis has been rarely tested. The reason for the scarce empirical work might be that patients' outcomes are attributed to a variety of factors, such as patients' lifestyle, biological factors, and the work of many healthcare providers that influence the patients in the rest of the variables. The relationship between motivation and outcomes is masked due to the many contributory factors. We try to distinguish this relationship in one very specific element of the provision of healthcare services: the connection between healthcare providers and patients with respect to the department's services.