Proactive career planning and development for Singapore Female Health Professionals

Findings from our previous study on Singapore female health professionals’ (SFHPs) career decisions showed that SHFPs often take a passive approach to their career planning and development, and subsequently face challenges in their careers. They often have jobs and careers incompatible with their life aspirations and needs, poor levels of job and career satisfaction, and weak work engagement. This study investigates the career planning and development behaviours of SFHPs, designing a programme to help increase their proactivity in lifelong career planning, taking into account their personal needs and life plans. Subsequently we will construct an assessment tool to evaluate effectiveness of career planning and development initiatives for SFHPs. This mixed-methods study will be conducted in three phases: (1) developing a model describing SFHPs’ career management behaviour from a representative quantitative survey and qualitative interviews; (2) designing and piloting a programme encouraging proactive career planning and development in SFHPs through co-design workshops with various stakeholders (healthcare employers, human resources professionals, and SFHPs); and (3) constructing an assessment tool to evaluate the effectiveness of career management programmes based on data from previous study phases and a scoping review of existing literature. This assessment tool will be validated using confirmatory factor analysis.