Job satisfaction among hospital nurses revisited: a systematic review

Abstract

Background: The current nursing shortage and high turnover is of great concern in many countries because of its impact upon the efficiency and effectiveness of any healthcare delivery system. Recruitment and retention of nurses are persistent problems associated with job satisfaction.

Objective: To update review paper published in 2005.

Design: This paper analyses 100 papers relating to job satisfaction among hospital nurses derived from systematic searches of seven databases covering English and Chinese language publications 1966-2011 (updating the original paper with 46 additional studies published 2004-2011).

Findings: Despite varying levels of job satisfaction across studies, sources and effects of job satisfaction were similar. Hospital nurse job satisfaction is closely related to working conditions and the organizational environment, job stress, role conflict and ambiguity, role perception and role content, organizational and professional commitment.

Conclusions: More research is required to understand the relative importance of the many identified factors relating to job satisfaction of hospital nurses. It is argued that the absence of a robust causal model reflecting moderators or moderator is undermining the development of interventions to improve nurse retention.