Factors affecting the job satisfaction levels and quit intentions of academic nurses
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.
Section snippets
Research Questions
- 1.
What are the job satisfaction levels of academic nurses?
- 2.
Does job satisfaction level of academic nurses differ by personal and professional characteristics
- 3.
Do academic nurses have any intention of quitting job?
- 4.
What are the reasons causing academic nurses to consider quitting job?
Sample
The study population consisted of academic nurses employed in 10 public nursing schools providing undergraduate and postgraduate education (master's degrees and doctorates) in Turkey. The study sample consisted of
Results
The data collected from 248 academic nurses gave results of 2.98 ± .59 in the sub-dimension of “managerial environment,” 3.19 ± .89 in “leadership,” 3.99 ± .89 in “colleagues,” 3.64 ± .82 in “quality of work,” 3.21 ± .87 in “work environment,” 3.27 ± 1.23 in “pay,” 2.38 ± .96 in “coursework,” 2.98 ± ± .72 in “job security,” 3.11 ± .61 in “freedom” and 2.01 ± .88 in “administrative works.”
When the participants' job satisfaction levels are considered according to their position titles (Table 1), professors have
Discussion
The results of this survey of academic nurses employed in public sector demonstrate that general job satisfaction of academic nurses is moderate, that they find the most satisfaction in the colleagues and quality of work sub-dimensions, while their lowest satisfaction levels are found in the pay and coursework sub-dimensions. In addition, academic nurses felt moderately free and considered their jobs secure, while they were moderately pleased with the managerial environment and leadership.
Other
Conclusion
Although it is a matter of global interest, only a limited number of studies of academic nurses' levels of job satisfaction are available, According to the results of studies academic nurses are moderately satisfied with their jobs. In addition, some factors including position title, academic experience, staff status and education level were found to affect levels of job satisfaction.
These results suggest that the administrators of nursing schools periodically investigate job satisfaction
The Limitations of the Study and Implications for Future Research
This study's findings are limited to academic nurses at state universities. In future studies, investigating the job satisfaction levels of academic nurses in private universities will provide insight into the situation in these universities.
The limited number of studies concerning the job satisfaction of academic nurses on international levels restricted the scope of this study's comparisons of its findings.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kadir Ardıç and Türker Baş for allowing me to use their “Job Satisfaction Scale” in this study, as well as the nursing schools that permitted data collection and the academic nurses that agreed to participate in the study.
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