Ying CAO, Yanqiu YU, Bing AN
Abstract
This descriptive study was conducted to identify the level of job satisfaction among nurses with different educational levels, length of clinical work, purposes for engaging in nursing work and clinical units. The sample consisted of 225 nurses working in a teaching hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province of the People's Republic of China. Proportional stratified random sampling was employed. The instrument used in this study was the Nurse Job Satisfaction Scale (NJSS) developed by the researcher. The validity of the scale was assessed by specialists and the reliability of the instrument was measured with the value of Cronbach's coefficient alpha being 0.98. SPSS was used for data analysis. The result revealed that the level of job satisfaction among nurses was at a moderate level. Nurses with different educational levels and different lengths of clinical work had different mean scores for job satisfactions, as educational levels and length of clinical work increased, the mean score of job satisfaction decreased. Among nurses with different purposes for engaging in nursing work and working in different clinical units, there were significantly different levels of job satisfaction. For the nine subscales of job satisfaction, nurses had high satisfaction level for two subscales, namely the recognition and praise and the achievement and responsibility, with the moderate satisfactory level for other seven subscales. Nursing administrators, researchers, and educators may use the findings of this study as a guideline for developing effective strategies to increase level of job satisfaction of nurses and decrease the rate of turnover.
Key words: Job satisfaction, nurses