Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
641
The Influence of Organizational Characteristics and Caring Attributes of Managers on Nurses' Job Enjoyment
Gail Holland Wade, DNSc, Nursing, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA and Bonnie S. Osgood, MSN, RN, CNA, BC, Nursing, Christiana Care Health System, Wilmington, DE, USA.
| Learning Objective #1: discuss organizational, manager caring, and demographic variables that influence job enjoyment. |
| Learning Objective #2: relate the importance of job enjoyment as a nursing sensitive quality indicator to client outcomes. |
Purpose: The study purpose was to predict the effect of organizational characteristics and perceived caring attributes of nursing managers on nurses' job enjoyment.
Design: Data collection for this predictive correlational study occurred in the fall of 2005. The target population was all licensed nurses (N = 3170) employed by a large health care system within the mid Atlantic region.
Methods: Participants were surveyed using the Revised Nursing Work Index (Aiken & Patrician, 2000) with five subscales defined by Lake (2002), Nyberg's Caring Assessment Scale, the Job Enjoyment Subscale of the Nursing Job Satisfaction Scale (Hinshaw, Atwood, Gerber, & Erikson, 1987), and a demographic data form designed by the researchers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the study and demographic variables. Data from all complete cases of registered nurses (n = 788) were entered directly into the multiple regression equation.
Findings: Participants were primarily staff nurses (72%), female (96.4%), white (89.7%), full-time (59.2%), and 41 years of age or older (60%). Sixty-two percent had at least a baccalaureate degree in nursing and 4.5% had an advanced practice license. All variables except perceptions of primary supervisor caring and nurse participation in hospital affairs explained 30.5% of the variance in job enjoyment. Age, area of practice, and type of job explained an additional 5.9%.
Conclusions: Because the study findings were similar to those from other quantitative studies on organizational characteristics and nurses' job satisfaction where more then 60% of the variance remains unexplained, factors influencing job enjoyment may be specific to practice setting and roles. Additional research, using a mixed methodology, is needed to identify other variables that influence job enjoyment within specific areas of practice and roles.