Normative dimensions of health professionals’ learning culture and their impact on retention and recruitment

Abstract

The article analyses the impact of learning culture on recruitment and retention in health professions. Health professionals experience key normative meanings associated with a learning culture as prescriptive and thus crucial for recruitment and retention. The analytic approach involves a cultural-theoretical understanding of learning, qualitative empirical evidence, and a phenomenological-hermeneutic interpretive method. Four closely related normative meanings emerge as aspects of learning culture in health professional work relevant to recruitment and retention: A sense of agency, professional community, psychological safety, and culture of fallibility. Given the pressures on health professional work, the article also identifies some core challenges to realizing these meanings.