The Factors Affecting the Turnover Intention of Nurses at a Hospital

Abstract

The ethical issues nurses forming ≥40% of the entire manpower at healthcare institutions experience and their emotional recognition can cause their burnout, which can lead to turnover. This study aimed to determine the associations of turnover intention, develop turnover intervention programs for hospital nurses, and provide basic data necessary to manage human resources efficiently. Data were collected from 154 nurses working at a single university hospital with the approval of the institutional review board over a month of May 2015. The data were collected by using tools to measure ethical situation, emotional recognition, and turnover intention and such data were analyzed through the SPSS 23.0 Window program. The nurses were at severe or higher levels of an ethical situation, emotional recognition, and turnover intention. Their turnover intention was positively correlated with negative therapeutic behavior, irrational organizational administration, and negative nursing behavior, lack of respect for patients’ autonomy, excessive financial burden, or emotional recognition. The factor most significantly affecting turnover intention was emotional recognition. As nurses play more roles in healthcare practice, they experience an emotional state in which they have their decision-making emotionally controlled by emergency, ethical situations, and institutional pressure, which render them unable to control negative and distressful feelings. This situation places them at higher risk of turnover. It is therefore necessary to provide good manpower management, with the objective of preventing quantitative workload on nurses, and to develop intervention programs in pursuit of turnover prevention.