Intention to leave among staff nurses in small‐ and medium‐sized hospitals

Abstract

Aims and objectives To explore the factors associated with the intention to leave among nurses in small‐ and medium‐sized hospitals and to determine the predictors about work environment and rewards. Background Compared with large hospitals, insight into the working conditions, rewards and turnover of nurses working for these hospitals is lacking internationally. Design Cross‐sectional study design. Methods Data were obtained from the Korean Nurses Association's 2016 Welfare Policy and System Improvement Survey. Of the participants, data from 951 staff nurses working three shifts were analysed using hierarchical multiple regression to explore the predictors of nurses’ turnover intention. This study complied with the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology. Results The perceived pay level satisfaction was the most obvious and persistent predictor of the intention to leave. Living benefits were shown to be scarcely satisfied, rendering considerable influence on turnover intention. Concerning aspects related to the working environment, the implementation of contract‐abiding working hours and nurse‐friendly night shift schedules reduced the turnover intention of nurses. Conclusions Nurses in small‐ and medium‐sized hospitals are likely to have particular challenges in terms of professional growth. When fundamental rewards and basic working conditions are acceptable to nurses, their turnover can be reduced, and the professional growth can also be expected. Hospitals with a high nurse turnover rate need to preferentially verify these factors perceived by their nurses and to improve to increase nurses’ retention. Relevance to clinical practice Understanding the determinants of intention to leave can lead to the development of strategies that persuade nurses to remain employed. These findings inform policymakers, nurse managers and hospital managers of the causes of nurses’ intentions to leave in small‐ and medium‐sized hospitals. Our findings also provide empirical data on the working conditions and rewards of these nurses and suggest strategies for their retention.

Depressive symptoms, professional quality of life and turnover intention in Korean nurses

“…Shift work nurses in this study also presented with 1.25 times higher turnover intention, raising the need to improve working environments for shift work nurses and to introduce various flexible working arrangements so that work-life balance might be achieved. Increased overtime also significantly raised turnover intention, as shown in previous studies (Eltaybani et al 2018;Park et al 2019). In the present study, participants who had turnover intention reported an average of five hours of overtime work per week, while participants without turnover intention reported a weekly average of 4.3 hours of overtime.…”

“…Turnover intention, which refers to the consideration of changing careers, is one of the critical factors leading to actual nurse turnover (Khan et al 2018). Previous studies on the turnover intention of nurses identified that turnover intention is influenced by age, work experience, salary (Park et al 2019), work environment (Nantsupawat et al 2017;Trybou et al 2015) stress and burnout (Choi et al 2019;Khan et al 2018). However, studies focusing on the psychological factors that nurses may encounter while taking care of patients are limited.…”

The Unbearable Lightness of the Academic Work: The Positive and Negative Sides of Heavy Work Investment in a Sample of Italian University Professors and Researchers

“…The results, then, confirm the role of mediator of work engagement [88][89][90][91]. In other studies, reward is also confirmed as having a great impact on the job satisfaction of workers [92][93][94] and protects against intention to leave [95,96].…”

Turnover Rates and Factors Influencing Turnover of Korean Acute Care Hospital Nurses: A Retrospective Study Based on Survival Analysis

“…The data used in this study were administrative hospital status data from the HIRA, which contained information regarding nurses' demographic characteristics (e.g., age, sex, license acquisition date, hired or retired date) and the structural characteristics of hospitals (e.g., hospital type, location ownership, and nurse staffing levels). Therefore, the study did not consider nurses' working conditions (e.g., salary, workload [28], and low job satisfaction [29]) or organizational characteristics (e.g., organization commitment [30] and the leadership of supervisors [31]), which were identified as factors influencing nurse turnover in many previous studies. Despite this limitation, the results derived from the representative large cohort data were very reliable.…”