Abstract
Objective: In recent years, in acute phase medical treatment in Japan has been subject to a number of fairly radical reforms. As a result of these reforms, it can be fairly safely assumed that the job of head nurse has become even more complicated and tiring than before. With that in mind, the purpose of this study was to determine the current level of job satisfaction among head nurses in acute care wards.
Methods: 234 head nurses or nursing managers in charge of acute care wards in 37 hospitals were chosen as subjects. Each of the hospitals had at least 100 beds and all were located in Osaka Prefecture. A job satisfaction questionnaire survey was conducted by mail between May and July, 2009. 152 responses in total (65.0% response rate) were obtained from subjects, from which data was extracted and analyzed using data frequency, percentages, and t test analysis.
Results: We found that the average satisfaction score of the head nurses was 170.9±25.6. Moreover, we noticed that the job satisfaction rating was higher among head nurses aged 46 or more, while those with 24 years or more of nursing experience and those with 6 or more years of head nurse experience also scored highly.
Conclusions: The staff assignment standard of 7 patients per nurse was not directly related to job satisfaction; however, this study suggested that components of job satisfaction, namely “the relationship between nurses and doctors” and “nurse management”, affect the staff assignment standard.
