Understanding why health professionals are leaving the UK national health service (NHS) – A systematic review and narrative synthesis

BackgroundThere is a global health care workforce crisis with staff shortages and difficulties with recruitment and retention, including in the UK's National Health Service (NHS). To address this, it is important to understand why people decide to leave the NHS. Previous reviews have focused on specific NHS professions and have rarely considered factors in other settings which attract staff away from the NHS. This review aimed to include all professions in a systematic review of factors which "push" clinical staff to leave, or consider leaving, the NHS and which "pull" them to other destinations.MethodsWe searched PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, and EMBASE for peer-reviewed articles and Google Scholar for grey literature using search terms related to all NHS professions and intentions to leave the NHS. We included qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies and analysed data using a textual narrative synthesis with an integrated design.ResultsThirty-two papers were eligible for inclusion. We identified four key push factors: (1) high job demands due to, for example, staff shortages and increased workload; (2) failing organisational structures including poor pay and limited opportunities for career development; (3) personal and emotional factors such as work-related health issues and poor work/life balance, and (4) wider factors, including Brexit. The majority of factors identified as being responsible for high turnover were related to job demands and the organisational structure within the NHS. Factors pulling people to other destinations were discussed less frequently than push factors, but included perceptions of better: pay, working conditions, and work/life balance in other countries. Limitations to the studies included in the review were that evidence on all NHS professions was not available, and many of the studies were based on data collected retrospectively with the risk of recall bias.ConclusionPull and push factors affect multiple NHS professions. Further comparative studies comparing the UK with other countries can help inform potential interventions to improve staff retention.