Nursing Staff teamwork and Job Satisfaction

This paper deals with the factors affecting job satisfaction in nurses and mainly studies the impact of working environment, medical specialty, number of working hands and personal character of nurses on the job satisfaction experienced by nurses.
1.2 There is a skewed – demand supply situation in the healthcare industry as far as nursing is concerned. There is a huge shortage of well qualified nurses and this profession also has a high attrition rate and so the factors affecting job satisfaction in nurses need to be evaluated in detail. Extensive research has been done in this field and various factors like good doctor – nurse relationship, co-operation among colleagues, fixed work hours, authority to take independent decisions, management policies have been studied in detail.
1.3 Thesis Statement
After giving due consideration to all facts available it seems that the results obtained which state that better job satisfaction is achieved in a good working environment with co-operative co-workers and proper manpower appear to be correct.
Evaluation of Text-
Various studies have been conducted to assess the role of myriad factors in job satisfaction experienced by nurses. Most studies have studied many factors in totality so it is difficult to pin point the effect of a single factor on the question being discussed. Certain studies taken as reference do not have the required sample size.
This study had a sample size of 3675 in 80 different healthcare units and used the Nursing Teamwork Survey (NTS) with 33 questions to determine the factors affecting job satisfaction in nurses.

The 33 questions were related to personal information about the participant like sex, number of years in the profession, educational qualifications and questions about the working environment like duty rosters, number of working hours, job profile and co-workers. The survey was anonymous and the data obtained was analyzed in accordance with proper statistical tests.
II Body (Paragraph 1)
Supporting Idea 1
The effect of teamwork and working conditions on any working professional is profound, but in a high pressure job like nursing these factors become even more important. Emergency and intensive care situations can’t be handled without efficient teamwork and the working hours and responsibilities have to be rational so as to not overburden the nurses and give better care to patients. The various studies that favor this body of thought include works that have concluded that a higher degree of job satisfaction is linked with a positive work environment (Blegen, 1993, Zangaro and Soeken, 2007), adequate manpower (Aiken et al, 2002, Aiken et al, 2003, Cherry et al, 2007), better communication between doctors and nurses (Rosenstein, 2002). Work done by Adams and Bond, 2000 and Kovner et al, 2006 has also linked better retention of nurses in a cordial environment. Other works that can be cited in the same vain include the works of Cox, 2003, Rafferty et al, 2001, Amos et al, 2005, DiMeglio et al, 2005, Chang et al, 2009.
In this study, logistic regression was used to analyze the data. The study reaffirmed the view that mutual co-operation between colleagues, adequate manpower and a healthy work environment were instrumental in deciding the job satisfaction.
III Paragraph II
Supporting Idea II
The effect of personal attributes of a nursing professional like age, sex, educational qualifications along with the medical setting they are working in also has to be considered in detail.
Some work has been done on factors like age (Rhodes, 1983, Lee 1985, Schwoerer and May, 1996), effect of gender on personal job satisfaction (Clark, 1997) but there works were not conducted in a healthcare setting. Hence, there is a dire need for in-depth research in all the above mentioned factors so that improvements can be made and retention rates increased.
In this study, participants were questioned about the personal attributes, working conditions and had to provide answers on a Likert scale. It was seen that older female nurses who were stationed in pediatric ICU’s, maternity or emergency units and were responsible for lesser number of patients and those nurses who were more qualified demonstrated a higher level of satisfaction with their job profiles.
This can be explained by the fact that experienced nurses probably have more decision making authority and due to their seniority are treated with respect both by doctors and co-workers. Emergency units demonstrate better job satisfaction mainly because due to so called life saving miracles that are routinely performed in such a setting, higher satisfaction demonstrate among female nurses might actually be the product of negative attitude of male stereotyping of a male doctor.
Figure 1: Demonstration of The basic framework of the study

IV Conclusion
In a nutshell it can be stated that nursing as a profession needs to be nurtured in a working environment which is positive and conducive to the aim of providing better care to patients. Teamwork, good working environment, positive incentives and reasonable work load are factors that play an extremely important role in providing job satisfaction and retaining trained workforce.
This study has demonstrated the effects of the above mentioned factors in providing job satisfaction to nurses and has stressed the need to work on these factors so as to allocate proper resources to correct the lacunae in organization and manpower. The organization has to take steps to ensure that the nurses do not have to bear the brunt of workload in an environment which does not promote frank exchange of ideas. It is must that the healers of our society are given an environment in which teamwork is promoted and appreciation and responsibilities are divided on an equal and deserving basis.