Kontakt 2013, 15(2):115-127 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2013.015

Trends of job satisfaction in nursesNursing

Kateřina Ivanová^1,*, Jiří Vévoda¹, Marie Nakládalová², Jana Marečková³

¹ Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Lékařská fakulta, Ústav sociálního lékařství a zdravotní politiky

² Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Lékařská fakulta a Fakultní nemocnice Olomouc, Klinika pracovního lékařství

³ Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Fakulta zdravotnických věd, Ústav ošetřovatelství

In recent years, the social prestige of a job of nurses has been increasing. Her profession requires fairly high qualification and has benefits for the society. This requires increased working saturation and reduced fluctuation of nurses. Therefore, motivational strategy should be based on trends of their job satisfaction. Herzberg's motivation theory clearly explains "what motivates people to work" and is methodologically worked out in details. The basic principle of the research design was double evaluation of 16 factors of working environment. These factors were created according to Herzberg's theory and were completed by experts in nursing in pilot studies. First, nurses ordered them according to their own value preference, followed by the degree of their fulfilment of the employer. Mutual comparison of arithmetic averages of individual factors then clearly shows the greatest divergence between the desire and the reality in nurses in the working place. The first extensive survey was worked out in 2006, the second - representative - in 2011 by the way of interviewer's sheet. The research repetition shows the trends of job satisfaction in nurses. The target group of the research was created by nurses working in hospitals of the Czech Republic. In 2006, 3,081 respondents participated in the research, in 2011, 1,992 respondents didn't reject the interview. The first four factors (Wage/Salary, Patient care, Job certainty, Cooperation) are preferred in both surveys in the same order. A significant shift in 2011 survey is the factor of Prestige of the profession. The importance of the profession perceived by the general nurses themselves is in harmony with traditional and contemporary preference of a job content itself (patient care), with increased education of nurses and also with the trend of increasing prestige of nurses.

Keywords: prestige of the profession; nurses; job satisfaction; trends; Herzberg's motivation theory; factors of working environment

Received: December 19, 2012; Accepted: February 28, 2013; Published: June 18, 2013  Show citation