Nurses Perceptions about Working Overtime and the Related Factors in Japanese Hospitals: A Quantitative Investigation

Abstract

[Aim] To describe nurses' perceptions about working overtime and the related factors, and to investigate the relationship between these factors.

[Methods] We conducted a questionnaire survey of 2,408 general nurses from 164 hospitals that cooperated with this study among the 774 hospitals nationwide. They were extracted using proportional allocation with stratified random sampling. A factor analysis was conducted on nurses' perceptions about working overtime and nurses' perceptions of factors related to working overtime. We identified causal associations between the factors using structural equation modeling.

[Results] The subjects of this study were 1,497 general nurses (valid response rate: 62.2%). The factor analysis results were comprised of four factors for nurses' perceptions about working overtime and seven factors for nurses' perceptions of factors related to working overtime. The results of the structural equation modeling indicated that the large amount of work outside of patient care had the greatest effect of making nurses aware of the four factors of perceptions about overtime work (β=0.430–0.761, p<0.05). Meanwhile, the organizations' proactive approach about working overtime greatly affected the reduction of nurses' desire to resign if the current overtime work remained unchanged (β=-0.518, p<0.05), exceeding the large amount of work outside of patient care (β=0.457, p<0.05).

[Conclusion] This study indicated that organization of the workload outside of patient care, the involvement of nursing administrators, and changing the way the organization operates to enable nurses to feel the organization's proactive approach to working overtime may alleviate the sense of burden of overtime work for nurses.