Work-Life Balance of Doctoral Nursing Program Faculty and Implications for Nursing Education

Purpose and Significance: Work-life balance (WLB) contributes to a healthy work environment and is an issue that may affect job performance, job satisfaction and one’s intent to remain in a position. WLB is defined as one’s ability to achieve and maintain a ‘balance’ between work and life outside work. Data describing work-life balance of PhD and DNP program faculty were collected through administration of a work-life balance measure as part of a larger survey, and an open-ended question about their experiences. Strategies that doctoral program faculty use to achieve work-life balance were also identified.

Methods: Data were collected from a random sample of 554 doctoral program faculty who completed an on-line researcher-developed survey. Doctoral program nursing faculty were asked about their work-life balance via a 15-item Work/Life Balance Self-Assessment scale that asked about the frequency with which they performed specific behaviors during the past three months using a 7-point time-related scale. They were also asked to identify strategies they use to achieve work-life balance. An open-ended item on the survey asked respondents to provide any additional comments they had related to the issues addressed in the overall survey.

Analysis: Quantitative data were analyzed using frequencies, analysis of variance, and hierarchical regression. Responses to the open-ended question were analyzed using conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

Results:  Analysis of quantitative data indicated that current faculty position, number of hours spent weekly teaching, availability of research or teaching assistants, and the presence of an MSN program option explained 7.3% of the variance in work-life balance. After controlling for these characteristics, sacrificing time for self to fulfill work responsibilities, the perception that family responsibilities are incompatible with work role, a sense their work with doctoral students was exhausting, belief that their workload is detrimental to health and well-being, and experiencing fulfillment in performing the work role together predicted an additional 56.5% of the variance in work-life balance. Results of data from the open-ended question from the 137 respondents who provided substantive responses included comments that addressed work-life balance. These included the effect of aging and retirement of senior faculty members on doctoral program faculty workloads, lack of workload credit for dissertation or capstone work, the invisible nature of doctoral teaching, issues associated with the tenure track, inadequate time for research and scholarship, the shortage of faculty in the academic unit, and the burden of administrative responsibilities.

Conclusions: The results of analysis of quantitative and qualitative data are consistent with findings of the authors’ previous focus group study of DNP and PhD faculty. Although several factors associated with work-life balance are a function of faculty members’ age, faculty rank, and time in their faculty role, other factors can be modified to improve faculty members’ work-life balance. With the wave in retirements anticipated, strategies to do so may be important in retaining experienced faculty to teach and mentor future doctoral students.