Nursing education, job satisfaction and intentions in the first year after graduation

Project Member(s): Kenny, P.

Start year: 2014

Summary: Nurses comprise the largest professional group in the healthcare workforces of most developed countries and many of these health systems are facing similar challenges with regard to the future supply of nurses. High attrition rates among young and newly registered nurses contribute to these challenges. Experiences of the workplace during education and the extent to which graduate nurses enter the nursing workforce feeling competent and prepared for clinical work may be important factors in early career attrition. This project aims to investigate the extent to which clinical education and preparation for work is a contributory factor in workforce attrition among new graduate nurses. It will do this by examining the impact of satisfaction with nursing education on job satisfaction and intentions to leave a nursing job. It will focus on satisfaction with clinical training and job preparation and the extent to which this is associated with job satisfaction in the first job after graduation and the intention to leave this job. Structural equation modelling will be used to understand the relationships among these factors and the direction of associations. The project will build on earlier work of this research team, which found a substantial proportion of final year nursing students and new graduates to be dissatisfied with their preparation for nursing work. The proposed research will use an existing dataset produced by this earlier project which has been conducting annual online surveys with a cohort of nursing students recruited through UTS and University of New England nursing schools. The proposed research has the potential to make an important contribution to information for the development of policy strategies for the retention of early career nurses in the healthcare workforce and to lead to an application for further funding.

Keywords: supply of nurses, health workforce, preparation for work, structural equation modelling

FOR Codes: Health Economics, Workforce Transition and Employment, Health Policy Economic Outcomes, Nursing, Health economics , Schools and learning environments, Provision of health and support services, Evaluation of health and support services

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.