Intent to Stay in Nursing Profession and Its Predictors Among Nurses Working in Jimma Zone Public Hospitals, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: About 4- 54% of nurses worldwide intend to leave their profession hence hospitals are facing difficulties in providing quality nursing care due to shortage of experienced nurses. This shortage is related with low nurse to population ratio, inadequate financial resource to train sufficient number of nurses and turnover of existing nurses from their profession which is the outcome of low intention to stay in the profession. Several factors affect intention of nurses to stay in their profession. Among these job satisfactions, professional and organizational commitment, job related stress and poor nurse-physician communication, and leadership style were identified as a common cause at different time at different parts of the world. In Ethiopia, a number of nurses leave their profession each year, their level of intention to stay in their profession is known only to some extent till know so, this study may help as a baseline to find out factors that related with intention to stay in the profession among nurses working at Jimma zone public hospitals. Objective: This study aims to assess intent to stay in the nursing profession and its predictors among nurses working in Jimma Zone public Hospitals from March 10-April 10, 2014. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted on 317 nurses. Structured selfadministered questionnaires were used to collect data. Data was cleaned with Epi-data version 3.1 and then exported to IBM SPSS version 20 for analysis. Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and linear regression were done to see mean difference and association of variables. Pvalue of less than 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Result: The overall level of intention to stay is 57.75% of which 133 (42%) of them have low, 95 (30%) of them have moderate and the rest 89 (28.1%) have high level of intention to stay in the profession. Organizational and professional commitment, working at district hospital, job satisfaction, organizational factor, and job related stress were identified as predictors of intention of nurses to stay in their profession. Conclusion: The overall level of intention to stay is slightly more than half. So, improving this level of intention needs collaborative intervention on related factors which is a big homework for managers on health sectors of Jimma zone, and Jimma zone public Hospitals.