Job Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave Among Registered Nurses Employed in Hospital Settings in the State of Florida

Author

Kenneth W. Hazell, Lynn University

Date of Award

4-20-2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Granting Institution

Lynn University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PHD)

Degree Program

Global Leadership - with a specialization in Corporate and Organizational Management

Department

College of Business and Management

First Advisor

Linsley DeVeau

Second Advisor

William Leary

Third Advisor

Ann Crawford

Abstract

Burnout among individual nurses in today's society is a paramount issue that carries a two-sided relationship. The individual nurse must be free of job stress and have personally obtained job satisfaction to alleviate aspects of burnout in the work environment (Maslach & Leiter, 2005). Healthcare and nursing organizations must strategize ways to help today's nurse reduce the potentials for job stress and enforce the absence of job stress and maintain a level of job satisfaction by encompassing understanding, and decreasing the variables such as work overload, lack of control, role conflict, fit, and role ambiguity that are antecedents to worker burnout.

Nurses subjected to burnout have been shown to experience a wide range of physical ailments, psychological deficits, and social impairment that prevent them from properly performing their nursing duties. Although, researchers have examined burnout in the work environment, little is known about the overall relationships among job satisfaction, job stress, and intention to leave as it applies to nursing burnout.

The purpose of this non-experimental (comparative) and explanatory (correlational) online survey research was to test a hypothesized model about demographic characteristics, work profile characteristics, job stress, burnout, job satisfaction, and intention to leave among hospital employed registered nurses in the State of Florida. A total of 28,5 11 e-mail invitations were sent out to the entire accessible population of actively licensed registered nurses in the State of Florida asking them to participate in the survey via Survey Monkey. The data producing sample consisted of 129 (response rate = 0.45%). A six part survey was used to measure Demographic Characteristics, Work Profile Characteristics, Job Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave. Demographic Characteristics and Work Profile Characteristics were developed by the researcher. Job Stress was measured by the Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS) (French, Lenton, Walters, & Eyles, 2000) which contains 57-items. The Maslach Burnout Inventory- Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS), a 22-item scale was utilized to measure nursing Burnout. The 7-item Professional Turnover Questionnaire (Price & Mueller, 1981) measured Job Satisfaction. Intention to Leave was measured by the 4-item Intention to Leave Scale (Kim, Price, Mueller, & Watson, 1996). Reverse scoring was implemented on negatively phrased questions from the Job Satisfaction and Intention to Leave scales.

Exploratory data analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and coefficient alphas were used to examine the psychometric qualities of the scales. To answer the three research questions, descriptive statistics, independent t tests and one-way ANOVA were used. Finally, to test the four research hypotheses, stepwise (enter) hierarchical multiple regression was used to find the best explanatory models. This research examined the factors that explain burnout among hospital employed registered nurses in the State of Florida.

Findings reported that the Burnout scale had the most significant explanatory variables of Job Satisfaction. Personal Accomplishment was the highest significant explanatory variable of Job Satisfaction followed by Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization. The explanatory model explained a range of 5.5% to 6.0% of the variation in Job Satisfaction for both H1 and H3. Job Satisfaction was the most significant explanatory variable of Intention to Leave. The explanatory model explained a range of 2-7% to 3.4% of the variation in Intention to Leave (H2) and a range of 2.7% to 3.5% (H4).

Future research utilizing this study's model to examine the correlation of Job Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave among registered nurses on a broader scale in other work environments, in other States within the United States of America and globally to strengthen generalizability.

Recommended Citation

Hazell, K. W. (2010). Job Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave Among Registered Nurses Employed in Hospital Settings in the State of Florida [Doctoral dissertation, Lynn University]. SPIRAL. https://spiral.lynn.edu/etds/237