Study of ICU nurses' perception of the working environment and its impact on the intention of turnover

Abstract

Objective To investigate the status quo of ICU nurses' working environment and its impact on their turnover intention. Methods A total of 388 nurses from 8 different intensive units in a class Ⅲ grade A in Sichuan province were surveyed by the general information questionnaire, the practice environment scale of the work index (PES-NWI) and the turnover intention sScale in September 2016. The correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis were used to explore the effect of work environment on turnover intention. Results The average PES-NWI score was (97.38±13.89) . The domain of nursing foundations for quality of care had the highest score, whereas the score of the staffing and resource adequacy was the lowest. Different age, health condition, working years, ICU working years, working title, the numbers of night shift, and social support might affect the ICU nurses' perception of working environment. The average score of turnover intention among the participants was (14.67±3.46) . There was up to 71.4% (277/388) of nurses reported a high intention of turnover. There was a negative correlation between the nurses' perception of working environment and their turnover intention (r=-0.319, P<0.01) . Nursing work environment is one of the influencing factors of turnover intention, which can explain 10.2% of the variance. Conclusions Corresponding management strategies such as the modification of human and material resources can be adopted by decision-makers to improve the working environment, thus to minimize the likelihood of nurse turnover. Key words: Nurses; Intensive unit; Working environment; Turnover intention