Job satisfaction of emergency nurses in Tennessee

Emergency departments seem to attract highly motivated nurses who are challenged by this unique specialty area of nursing practice. Emergency nurses have initial contact with patients, making assessments and directing patients to the appropriate resources for health care. Skilled emergency nurses need to remain motivated to have job satisfaction and productivity for quality patient care. The purpose of this study was to identify intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contributed to job satisfaction and dissatisfaction among emergency nurses, to determine if there was a relationship between emergency nurses' years of experience and job satisfaction, and to ascertain if there was a difference between the job satisfaction of emergency nurses who belong to their professional organization, The Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) and those who do not. The sample of 458 nurses consisted of two groups. Group I were ENA members (n = 239). Group II was composed of emergency nurses who were not ENA members (n = 219). Herzberg's two-factor theory was used in the descriptive context with intrinsic and extrinsic factors to describe the conditions under which nurses in this study were influenced to feel satisfied or dissatisfied. This study of emergency nurses indicated that more of the motivating, or intrinsic, factors contributed to job satisfaction and the extrinsic factors contributed least to job satisfaction of nurses in this sample. The job characteristics model of Hackman and Oldham served as an effective basis for this study. It is possible that a position high in the intrinsic dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback had the potential to be highly motivating. This motivation potential created opportunities for considerable self-direction, learning, and personal accomplishment. The future of intrinsic factors and their relationship to motivation and job satisfaction research may lie in how theories can be integrated with behavioral motivation and job characteristics. Social service, defined as the chance to do things for other people, was identified as the intrinsic factor that contributed most to the job satisfaction in this sample of emergency nurses. The intrinsic factor that contributed least to job satisfaction was security, defined as the way the job provided steady employment. Subjects indicated that the factor named co-workers, defined as the way coworkers got along with each other, was associated with the highest level of job satisfaction for extrinsic scales. The extrinsic factor of company policies and practices, defined as the way company policies were put into practice, was associated with the lowest level of job satisfaction for extrinsic scales. Examination of the relationship between emergency nurse experience and job satisfaction was performed utilizing the Spearman correlation coefficient. Results revealed that there was no correlation between experience and job satisfaction. The Mann-Whitney U test was utilized to determine if there was a difference between the job satisfaction of emergency nurses who belonged to the specialty professional organization ENA, and those who did not. The MannWhitney U test showed a significant difference, indicating higher job satisfaction in the ENA nurse group. Implications for nursing education, practice, and research related to future job satisfaction studies were suggested. Nursing educators should explore with students what factors are significant contributors to job satisfaction and dissatisfaction during role preparation. Changing demands upon nurses to learn advanced skills that produce positive patient outcomes within cost restraints make it imperative that nursing education address these issues in role preparation for students. An implication for nursing practice was indicated by attempting to discover the job conditions that appear to be important to nurses, analyzing responses, and implementing changes that reinforce job satisfaction and decrease dissatisfaction. Nursing research is needed to investigate a proposal that nurses would be more satisfied with their jobs if they were allowed more participation in decision-making processes with management.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Finley, Breezie Caudle

Contributors dc:contributor

• Smith, Maria
• College of Health, Education, and Professional Studies

• Emergency nursing
• Nurses--Job satisfaction--United States--Tennessee

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Identifier

LB2369.2 .F565 1996

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-2085