Sofia POTIRA, Olga SISKOU, Maria SPINTHOURI and Mamas THEODOROU
Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate the intention of nurses working in a Greek public general hospital to leave either the nursing profession or the hospital they work for and to identify the factors correlated to this intention.
Materials and methods: It is a quantitative cross-sectional study with a sample of 245 nurses (response rate 94.6%) working in the clinical departments of the General Hospital of Kavala (n=420 beds). The survey was conducted between June and July 2016. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire with closed-ended questions, filled out by the participants. The data analysis was conducted using the SPSS v 21.0 statistical package. The significance level was set to 0.05.
Results: Two-third of the study population (154 out of 232 nurses) stated their intention to leave the nursing profession and most of them quite soon, due to poor salary (60%), absence of work incentives (70%) and lack of skills development and career improvement opportunities (60%). However, about 50% of the participants reported that they didn’t want to leave the hospital they were working for. Correlation analysis indicated that young age, reduced job satisfaction, years of working experience and improved level of education were positively correlated with nurses’ intention to leave their profession (p<0.05).
Conclusions: As with most hospitals in the world, the issue of nurses’ intention to leave is increasing in Greece as well, especially during the years of the economic crisis. Effective practices for maintaining human resources, wage adjustments, education and distribution of benefits in a fair manner are needed in order to prevent the phenomenon ensure better healthcare services and patient safety conditions and enable the healthcare system to respond effectively to the negative consequences of the economic crisis.
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