Nurses' job involvement and association with continuing current position-A descriptive comparative study

Abstract

Aims and objectives: The aim of the study is to examine nurses' job involvement and intentions to continue in their current position.

Background: Globally, the supply of nurses fails to meet the labour markets' high demand. Compared to specialist health service, the community health service has the greatest challenge when it comes to nursing shortage. There is a lack of studies comparing nurses working in different parts of the healthcare system in research focusing on nurses' intentions to continue in their current position. Similarly, there has been relatively little research on nurses' job involvement, even less how it is associated with retaining the nurses, despite indications that job involvement may be the key to job-related motivated behaviour.

Design: A descriptive comparative study with a cross-sectional design.

Methods: The study comprises 297 nurses from the community health service and specialist health service, respectively. The relationships between nurses' intention to continue and participant characteristics were examined using binary logistic regression. Reporting followed the STROBE guidelines.

Results: Nurses in the community health service are older, have more children under the age of 18 and hold more permanent positions than nurses in the specialist health service. Job involvement is the only variable associated with nurses' intention to continue in their current position regardless of whether the nurse works in the community health service or specialist health service.

Conclusions: The results indicate that the community health service has the same possibilities as the specialist health service to retain nurses in their current jobs.

Relevance to clinical practice: The results indicate that nursing leaders/employers with a goal to retaining nurses are recommended to focus on improving the nurses' job involvement.

Keywords: community health service; job involvement; motivation; nurses; turnover; turnover intention.