Nursing staff teamwork and job satisfaction

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that within nursing teams on acute care patient units, a higher level of teamwork and perceptions of adequate staffing leads to greater job satisfaction with current position and occupation.

Abstract: Nursing shortages are one of the vexing problems in healthcare. As the demand continues to rise, the current supply is unable to meet society’s needs. This is a world wide phenomenon. In the United States, according to the latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), more than one million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2016 (BLS 2009). Additionally, more than 587,000 new nursing positions will be created (a 23.5% increase). Consequently, it is expected that nursing will be the nation’s top profession in terms of projected job growth (BLS 2009). Adding to this problem is that registered nurses (RNs) continue to leave their current positions and the profession at a high rate. It has been reported that up to 13% of new nurses consider leaving their jobs within one year (Kovner et al. 2007). Job dissatisfaction is reported to be strongly associated with nurse turnover (Hayes et al. 2006) and intent to leave (Brewer et al. 2009) thus highlighting the importance of understanding what promotes nursing staff job satisfaction. Teamwork has been associated with a higher level of job staff satisfaction (Horak et al. 1991, Leppa 1996, Cox 2003, Rafferty et al. 2001, Gifford et al. 2002, Collette 2004). The relationship between teamwork and job satisfaction in the acute care inpatient hospital nursing team, defined as the Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), nursing assistants (NAs) and unit secretaries (UAs) who work together on a patient care unit to provide nursing care to a group of inpatients, has received scant attention. Most recent research in healthcare on teamwork has been in perioperative and emergency settings and primarily focused on interdisciplinary teams (Morey et al. 2002, Silen-Lipponen et al. 2005, Salas et al. 2007, Mills et al. 2008).