Mixed Method Study on Caregiver Turnovers: A Qualitative Analysis on Turnovers in Nursing Homes and Quantitative Analysis on Prefectural Plans for Nursing Homes

A Comparison between the Turnover Rate of Care Workers and Other Industries

Japan has often been thought of as having a high turnover rate for care workers. As a matter of fact, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, on of the most popular newspapers in the country with approximately 3 million subscribers in Japan alone, reported this stating that the turnover rate of care workers in Japan is alarmingly high. Using surveys conducted by the public sector, we conducted a review of the turnover rate of care workers within the country and investigate the validity of this statement for discussion.

According to the survey by Care Worker Foundation (Kaigo Roudou Antei center), the turnover rate in the 2014 fiscal year was 16.5%” on February 14, 2016 (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 2016). Similar reports have been found in municipal policy statements labeled as Prefectural Insured Long-term Care Service Plans. The Long-Term Care Insurance Act mandates all 47 prefectures in Japan to come up with plans and update them triennially (Japanese Law Translation, 2009). According to our research, 20 prefectural plans (42.6%) reported that the turnover rate of care workers was higher than that of other workers in all 6 plans (2015 fiscal year to 2017 fiscal year) while one prefecture plan reported that the turnover rate of care workers was lower than that of other workers in the said prefecture.

We compared the Survey on Employment Trends by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare from the same year with the Survey on Employment in Insured Long-Term Care to find out whether the turnover rate of care workers is indeed higher than that of other workers within the country. However, we had to take into consideration the difference in survey designs and definitions of turnover rate between the two surveys.