Patterns of resident health workforce turnover and retention in remote communities of the Northern Territory of Australia, 2013–2015

Table 3 Summary of Aboriginal health practitioner workforce metrics, by community population size and type

Population size category of remote community	Number of clinics	Mean annual AHP turnover (%) (95% CI)	Mean AHP annual stability (%) (95% CI)	Mean number of pay periods per year with an AHP who has remained for 2 or more years (95% CI)^a	Mean survival probability for AHPs after 12 months (95% CI)	Average survival^b time for AHPs in years (95% CI)
<200 predominantly Aboriginal	6	75.7 (29.7, 193.4)	75.0 (37.9, 100.0)	8.0 (6.8, 9.3)	0.09 (0.00, 0.35)	0.31 (0.08, 0.88)
200–349 predominantly Aboriginal	7	66.5 (29.4, 150.4)	87.1 (51.4, 100.0)	9.7 (8.7, 10.8)	0.00 (−, −)	0.23 (0.15, −)
350–799 predominantly Aboriginal	14	93.1 (58.6, 147.9)	73.6 (52.9, 100.0)	8.8 (8.0, 9.7)	0.45 (0.23, 0.64)	0.77 (0.23, 1.92)
≥800 predominantly Aboriginal	11	65.8 (42.6, 101.7)	75.6 (57.7, 99.1)	17.8 (16.3, 19.3)	0.30 (0.12, 0.50)	0.46 (0.15, 1.03)
Predominantly non-Aboriginal	4	169.0 (53.0, 539.1)	77.8 (28.4, 100.0)	3.7 (2.9, 4.6)	0.00 (−, −)	0.04 (0.04, −)
Total for AHPs	42	79.4 (60.5, 104.2)	76.3 (63.5, 91.7)	10.1 (9.6, 10.6)	0.27 (0.16, 0.39)	0.46 (0.23, 0.84)

Turnover and stability calculations done at an aggregate level for each category of population size
AHP Aboriginal health practitioners, CI confidence interval, FTE full-time equivalent
^aPoisson distribution assumed (and the superscript in the cell with mean number of pay periods)
^bMedian survival inestimable for seven remote health services (two services in <200, three services in 200–349, one in 350–799, one in ≥ 800 population size categories)

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