Factors affecting the job satisfaction levels and quit intentions of academic nurses

Summary

The descriptively designed study was conducted in order to determine academic nurses' job satisfaction levels, intention of leaving job and effective reasons. The study was implemented in 10 nursing schools offering postgraduate and doctoral education in Turkey, and data was collected from academics working in these schools who agreed to participate in the study. After obtaining the required approval from the ethics committees and institutional permissions, data was collected from 248 academic nurses using a personal information form and a “Job Satisfaction Scale” between June 2009 and January 2010. The data was analyzed by frequency and percentage distribution, using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient, ANOVA, Qui-Square and Tukey's HSD test for advanced analysis methods with SPSS 11.5 statistics packet software.

This study concludes that academic nurses are moderately satisfied with their jobs. In addition, job satisfaction was found to be lower among research assistants, assistant professors, nurses with less than 10 years of academic experience, nurses who have completed their doctorate dissertations, or who are working on appointment or contract basis.

Introduction

Jobs play an important role in human life, and job satisfaction is an effective factor on individual work life (Çam and Yıldırım, 2010, Karaman and Altunoğlu, 2007). People must be satisfied with their jobs to be productive, successful and happy at work.

There are various definitions of job satisfaction; however, it is generally defined as “people's feelings about their jobs and the various dimensions of their jobs” (Spector, 1997), “harmony between personal and job characteristics”, “satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a job” (Bilge et al., 2007, Gui et al., 2009a, Keser, 2006) and “individual perception level and emotional reaction to a job” (Çam and Yıldırım, 2010).

Dissatisfaction with work life, unhappiness, disappointment and lack of enthusiasm negatively affect people's everyday lives, preventing them from getting enough satisfaction from life and possibly impairing their physical and mental health by negatively affecting their environment and relationships with family and friends (Keser, 2006, Serinkan and Bardakçı, 2009). Consequently, this may lead to undesired results for the employer such as alienation indifference to the job, a decreasing sense of attachment to the employing institution, constant complaints about the job, falling productivity, absenteeism and quitting the job (Dericioğulları et al., 2007, Sağlam, 2011, Serinkan and Bardakçı, 2009).

Academics producing, sharing and distributing information may experience job dissatisfaction due to reasons such as their work environment, administrative work loads, teaching workloads, academic career pressure (Dericioğulları et al., 2007, Karabıyık et al., 2008, Sağlam, 2011), inequity in distributing duties and rewards (Dericioğulları et al., 2007, Odabaşı et al., 2010, Sağlam, 2011), inadequate pay (Sağlam, 2011) or unfair pay distribution (Dericioğulları et al., 2007, Odabaşı et al., 2010), lacking support for scientific works and studies (Dericioğulları et al., 2007), temporary employment, constantly changing criteria for academic appointment and promotion, unfair distribution of academic titles, or lacking support for their participation in domestic and foreign scientific pursuits (Çam and Yıldırım, 2010, Sağlam, 2011).

Job dissatisfaction also causes academics to feel disenchantment with institutions, despite their attachment to their profession. They may want to leave for another institution when better professional conditions are offered, which results in loss of skilled personnel (Özmen et al., 2005).

In Turkey studies of academics working in a variety of disciplines have identified the most important problem as inadequate pay. Thus academics assume the load of additional classes, and this negatively affects their motivation (Odabaşı et al., 2010, Türk Sanayicileri ve İş Adamları Derneği (TÜSİAD), 2008, Yükseköğretim Kurulu (YÖK), 2007). After inadequate salaries, academics see poor working conditions and difficulty obtaining promotions as the biggest problems (YÖK, 2007).

Focusing on the factors that affect academic job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity is quite important for maintaining the quality of education. Job dissatisfaction is a factor that reduces individual performance and leads to the negative outcome of employee loss. Job dissatisfaction should be investigated in order to determine which measures may increase the efficiency and productivity of academics and retain them in academic institutions, and in order to develop effective strategies to reach organizational goals. It is more expensive to eliminate or prevent the negative effects of job dissatisfaction, than it is to prevent job dissatisfaction itself.

It is important to create a calm, productive and satisfied working environment for the academic nurses responsible for educating the nurse labor force needed by the country, to increase their sense of attachment to their institutions (Al-Hussamı et al., 2011), to reduce employee loss among nurses, to increase the quality of nursing education and to educate qualified future nurses (Çam, 2001, Çam and Yıldırım, 2010, Karadağ and Uçan, 2006).

To enable them to do their jobs more effectively a more satisfying work life is an indispensable necessity for faculty members who will educate nurses for work in the field after both undergraduate and postgraduate educations, as well as for younger academic nurses. Job satisfaction will increase the quality of the services of academic nurses and the services given by their students in the field.

There are only a limited number of studies that measure the job satisfaction levels of nurses (Çam, 2001, Çam and Yıldırım, 2010). These studies reported that academic nurses develop negative attitudes, are not satisfied with their jobs and experience burnout due to reasons such as the difficulty of advancing in academic careers, economic problems, rivalry with colleagues, interpersonal problems, work environment problems, managerial problems, difficulties with female and maternal roles in family life, and educational and health problems (Çam, 2001, Çam and Yıldırım, 2010, Negiz and Tokmakçı, 2011). However, there is no comprehensive study investigating their intentions regarding leaving their job.

Based on this shortcoming in the literature, this study was carried out to determine job satisfaction levels and the intentions to quit of academic nurses.