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      Work satisfaction of professional nurses in South Africa: a comparative analysis of the public and private sectors

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      1 ,
      Human Resources for Health
      BioMed Central

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          Abstract

          Background

          Work satisfaction of nurses is important, as there is sufficient empirical evidence to show that it tends to affect individual, organizational and greater health and social outcomes. Although there have been several studies of job satisfaction among nurses in South Africa, these are limited because they relate to studies of individual organizations or regions, use small samples or are dated. This paper presents a national study that compares and contrasts satisfaction levels of nurses in both public and private sectors.

          Methods

          This was a cross-sectional survey of professional nurses conducted throughout South Africa using a pretested and self-administered questionnaire. Univariate and bivariate statistical models were used to evaluate levels of satisfaction with various facets of work and to elicit the differences in satisfaction levels between different groups of nurses. A total of 569 professional nurses participated in the study.

          Results

          Private-sector nurses were generally satisfied, while public-sector nurses were generally dissatisfied. Public-sector nurses were most dissatisfied with their pay, the workload and the resources available to them. They were satisfied only with the social context of the work. Private-sector nurses were dissatisfied only with their pay and career development opportunities. Professional nurses in the more rural provinces, those intending to change sectors and those more likely not to be in their current positions within the next five years were also more likely to be dissatisfied with all facets of their work.

          Conclusion

          This study highlighted the overall dissatisfaction among South African nurses and confirmed the disparity between the levels of job satisfaction between the public and private sectors. Health managers should address those factors that affect job satisfaction, and therefore retention, of nurses in South Africa. Improving the work environment so that it provides a context congruent with the aspirations and values systems of nurses is more likely to increase the satisfaction of nurses and consequently have a positive effect on individual, organizational and health outcomes.

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          Most cited references56

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          Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences

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            Improving nurse retention in the National Health Service in England: the impact of job satisfaction on intentions to quit.

            In recent years the British National Health Service (NHS) has experienced an acute shortage of qualified nurses. This has placed issues of recruitment and retention in the profession high on the political agenda. In this paper, we investigate the determinants of job satisfaction for nurses and establish the importance of job satisfaction in determining nurses' intentions to quit the NHS. We find that nurses who report overall dissatisfaction with their jobs have a 65% higher probability of intending to quit than those reporting to be satisfied. However, dissatisfaction with promotion and training opportunities are found to have a stronger impact than workload or pay. Recent policies, which focus heavily on improving the pay of all NHS nurses, will have only limited success unless they are accompanied by improved promotion and training opportunities. Better retention will, in turn, lead to reduced workload.
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              Predicting registered nurse job satisfaction and intent to leave.

              Nurse job dissatisfaction has been the primary predictor of intent to leave; however, although many predictors of job satisfaction have been identified, little is known about the influence of variable nurse attitudes, such as psychological empowerment and hardiness, on job satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative influence of nurse attitudes, context of care, and structure of care on job satisfaction and intent to leave. A nonexperimental, predictive design evaluated these relationships in a nonrandom sample of 90 registered staff nurses using instruments with known psychometric properties. The major predictor of intent to leave was job dissatisfaction, and the major predictor of job satisfaction was psychological empowerment. Predictors of psychological empowerment were hardiness, transformational leadership style, nurse/physician collaboration, and group cohesion. Results supported the influence of nurse attitude on job satisfaction relative to other contributing factors.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Hum Resour Health
                Human Resources for Health
                BioMed Central
                1478-4491
                2009
                20 February 2009
                : 7
                : 15
                Affiliations
                [1 ]School of Business and Finance, University of Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa
                Article
                1478-4491-7-15
                10.1186/1478-4491-7-15
                2650673
                19232120
                27d05107-31df-4a1a-9476-5d9b2710a2db
                Copyright © 2009 Pillay; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 25 February 2008
                : 20 February 2009
                Categories
                Research

                Health & Social care
                Health & Social care

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