DISSATISFACTION AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT: PRE-EMPTIVE PERCEPTIONS IN NIGERIAN YOUNG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS – A CRISIS OF THE EMERGING WORKFORCE?

DISSATISFACTION AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT IN YOUNG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

Abstract

Background: Within the Nigerian Health Sector, underemployment and dissatisfaction are recognised push factors of brain drain amongst health workers. These factors have not been adequately considered in the emerging workforce that continues to be lost to migration even before work experience in Nigeria. We wanted to know if graduating young health professionals (YHPs) harbour perspectives of underemployment and dissatisfaction.
Methodology: Graduating YHPs: doctors—181 students, dentists—16 students, nurses—60 students, physiologists—58 students, and pharmacologists—53 students; a total of 368 students of Lagos State University College of Medicine (LASUCOM) were survey respondents in this descriptive survey using a five-point structured Likert scale questionnaire in two successive academic sessions, 2021/2022 and 2022/2023. Statistics of coded data were done with Microsoft Office 2013 Excel® spreadsheet and Statistical Product and Service Solution package (IBM SPSS Statistics 27®) to obtain descriptive statistics, correlation, and graphs.
Results: The majority of students (>60%) were educated in entrepreneurship through the curricular ENT
202 and ENT 302 courses, and 25.5% indicated interest in studying business later. The emerging workforce
from LASUCOM has preemptive perceptions of both dissatisfaction and underemployment, with the most
frequent responses to indicators of either variable being agree (coded 4). The YHPs’ strongest dissatisfaction
is that many financially endowed patients prefer to go abroad for treatment, with a skewness of -0.863 ±
0.131 towards agree—strongly agree. The YHPs’ highest leaning towards agree-strongly agree amongst
underemployment indicators is for “I do not know excellent places wherein I would like to work in Lagos
State,” with a skewness of .240±.131. The highest sum of coded responses for underemployment, 1111, is
for “I do not know famous health professions specialists working in Lagos State that inspire me.”
Conclusion: The YHPs investigated in this study, an emerging workforce, have not yet been exposed to proper employment nor acquired work experience within Nigeria as professionals but harbour preemptive perspectives of underemployment and dissatisfaction.