Linda CHAN, Hector W. H. TSANG
Abstract
The study aimed at evaluating the job satisfaction of health care assistants and to explore ways to improve their performance and the collaborative relationship with nurses in Shatin Hospital. It is hoped that a better understanding of these would facilitate nursing management to improve their work performance. The quality of nursing services can also be enhanced. The Job Satisfaction Scale was used to measure the job satisfaction of health care assistants and the Task Performance Checklist was used to evaluate the satisfaction of health care assistants and nurses on the performance of health care assistants. Convenient samples of 51 health care assistants and 55 nurses were drawn from those who volunteered to take part in this study. The results showed that health care assistants in general liked and were satisfied with their job. However, nurses had lower satisfaction level on health care assistants' performance especially on those tasks which required special skills such as taking blood pressure. The authors concluded that the discrepancy may be due to the difference of expectations and communication barriers between them. Suggestions were made to improve their collaborative relationship and enhance patient care quality.
Key words: Communication, health care assistants, job satisfaction