Engaged or not?: A case study on nurse's engagement in clinical settings in India

Abstract

Engagement is a much-debated term relating to its interpretation and direct outcomes. Engagement has a direct link to first-level outcomes such as turnover intention or employee performance. Engagement, in nursing, has also risen as an area of interest to health-care professionals and researchers. Extreme views about the nursing profession, female-centric workforce and different health systems in the nursing profession worldwide make this profession unique. This case study, combined with the grounded theory data analysis technique, aims to explore the nurse engagement practices in clinical settings in India and their impact on the turnover intention of nurses. Face-to-face interviews with nurses providing direct patient care from two tertiary care hospitals in India were conducted for data collection. A total of 17 interviews were analysed using the grounded theory coding mechanism. Five major themes emerged in this study. First, Leadership styles; second, social influence and nursing as a career of choice; third, the philanthropic side of nursing; fourth, generational difference towards nursing and fifth, the unfairness of treatment toward nurses. The study results suggested that there is a lack of engagement models in the Indian health-care delivery system, especially in the public sector. Nurses, while burdened with work, were found to be less valued and undercompensated at work, leading to low engagement and high turnover intention. Different generations of nurses had different views of the nursing profession. This study indicated a need to address nurse engagement according to age groups as the motivation of choosing nursing as a career has changed over the generations, resulting in varying degrees of engagement.