Leadership Soft Skills and Organizational Support Affecting the Performance of Public Health Officers at Sub-District Health Promoting Hospitals in Khon Kaen Province

Abstract

This cross-sectional descriptive research aimed to study leadership soft skills and organizational support affecting the performance of public health officers at sub-district health promoting hospitals in Khon Kaen province. A set of 151 samples was selected by systematic random sampling from 331 populations and 12 key informants were purposively selected and did in-depth interviews for gathering qualitative data. Questionnaire was examined and verified by three experts for content validity (IOC) having more than 0.50 in all items and tested for reliability by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showing as 0.97. Data collection was carried out from December  2022 to January  2023. Data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and also inferential statistics in terms of Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Stepwise Multiple Linear Regression analysis. The level of statistical significance was set as at 0.05.

The results showed that overall of leadership soft skills, organizational support and the performance of public health officers, were at high levels with the average of 4.34 (S.D.= 0.26), 4.16 (S.D.= 0.22), and 4.14 (S.D.= 0.22) respectively. The overall leadership soft skills and organizational support had high levels of relationship with the performance of public health officers (r=0.786, p-value <0.001 and r=0.721, p-value <0.001 respectively). Five variables consisted of three variables of leadership soft skills; personal development, coaching and communication, and two of organizational support; management and man power affected and could jointly predict the performance of public health officers at sub-district health promoting hospitals at 73.5 percent (R² = 0.735, p-value <0.001). From in-depth interviews, it was found that performing duties according to the roles of public health officers required continuously knowledge and ability improvement in academic ways. In addition, participating in organizing the operational plans was the main factor influencing the performance achievement and a key role for acting performance of public health officers was providing health services.