Job satisfaction among nurses: a literature review

Abstract

The current nursing shortage and high turnover is of great concern in many countries because of its impact upon the efficiency and effectiveness of any health-care delivery system. Recruitment and retention of nurses are persistent problems associated with job satisfaction. This paper analyses the growing literature relating to job satisfaction among nurses and concludes that more research is required to understand the relative importance of the many identified factors to job satisfaction. It is argued that the absence of a robust causal model incorporating organizational, professional and personal variables is undermining the development of interventions to improve nurse retention.

Introduction

The widespread nursing shortage and nurses’ high turnover has become a global issue (Kingma, 2001) which is of increasing importance to both the developed and developing countries (Cavanagh, 1990; Blegen, 1993; Hancock, 1998; Lee, 1998; Aiken et al., 2001; Fang, 2001; Lu et al., 2002). In light of this, concern about recruitment and retention of nursing staff is increasing in a number of countries (Lundh, 1999). While numerous factors have been linked to nurses’ turnover, job satisfaction is the most frequently cited (Cavanagh and Coffin, 1992; Blegen, 1993; Irvine and Evans, 1995), and therefore merits attention. This review examines the extensive empirical literature regarding nurses’ job satisfaction and its associated factors.