Paper
Thursday, 20 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Models for Nurses' Work Environment
Nurse Work Environments and Their Responses to These Work Environments
Ann Tourangeau, RN, PhD, Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Learning Objective #1: describe how acute care hospital nurses evaluate their work environments and their responses to these work environments.
Learning Objective #2: discuss hospital and nurse characteristics that contribute to nurse job satisfaction and intention to remain employed.
Purpose: The purposes of this paper are to further our understanding of how nurses evaluate their work environments and to explore the impact that these work environments have on nurse outcomes such as job satisfaction and intention to remain employed.

Methods: A survey was mailed to over 13,000 nurses working in medical, surgical, or critical care areas in Ontario, Canada acute care hospitals. Respondents were invited to answer questions related to their work environments and their responses to these work environments, including job satisfaction and career plans.
Descriptive statistics are used to describe characteristics of nurses working in four employment areas: medical, surgical, combined medical-surgical, and critical care. Multivariate analysis of variance analysis is used to investigate differences among nurses across the four employment areas. Multiple regression analyses are used to investigate determinants of nurse responses to their work environments.

Results: Nurses working within different areas of acute care hospitals report both similarities and differences in how they evaluate their work environments and in how they respond to their work environments. Approximately 41% of variance in nurse job satisfaction and 30% of variance in nurse intention to remain employed are explained by hospital and nurse characteristics. 

Conclusions: Nurses in acute care hospitals are not a homogeneous group with the same work environments and similar responses to these environments. Understanding the similarities and differences can lead to prioritizing what aspects of work environments should be targeted for which groups of nurses to develop and implement improvement strategies. Further, understanding determinants of important nurse outcomes is essential to develop strategies to promote improvements in these outcomes.

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