Abstract:
Background
The wide spread shortage of nurses is of concern not only in Tanzania but globally. Factors influencing increased mobility of the nursing workforce and their contribution to nurses’ turnover merit attention. Understanding nurses’ job satisfaction is important as this is a key factor in the nurses’ turnover.
Objectives: The study aimed at exploring the factors that influence job satisfaction among nurses in private hospitals in Dar es Salaam.
Method: A cross-sectional survey design was used and 200 nurses working in private hospitals in Dar es Salaam completed a self administered questionnaire. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).
Results: More than a half of the respondents 116(58%) were either very satisfied or satisfied with their jobs and 57(28.5%) felt dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their jobs while 27 (13.5%) were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. The majority of the respondents 152 (76%) reported high level of satisfaction with relation with co-workers, and 146(73%) showed satisfaction with working conditions and environment. A total of 70 (35%) participants expressed their satisfaction on benefits and compensation in their working facilities. However 65 % showed dissatisfaction with the benefit and compensation aspects of the job satisfaction and 54% demonstrated their intentions to leave their hospitals to public or different occupation from besides nursing.
Conclusion and Recommendation
From the findings of this study it can be concluded that nurses were moderately satisfied with their jobs in private hospitals. The levels of satisfaction differed from one variable to another. The low levels of satisfaction were seen in benefits and compensation and career development. However there were high levels of satisfaction among nurses on factors such as relation with co- workers, working conditions and environment and relation with supervisors.
Despite the facts that nurses were moderately satisfied with their jobs in private hospitals, still majority demonstrated their intention to leave their hospitals.
This study recommends that, it is imperative that private hospitals create a work environment which fosters growth and development among nurses which can be done by creating and implementing career development programs in working places.
Furthermore private hospitals should enhance nurses’ retention by creating or revising their benefits and compensation scales. Lastly it is recommended that private hospitals should develop policies that could improve and maintain the way they manage the human resources especially on the issues pertaining to benefits, training opportunities and promotions.
Although this study yielded important results about nurses’ job satisfaction, there is a need for much more research to be done. One recommendation is to repeat this study using a much larger sample to improve the likelihood of achieving statistically significant results that could be generalized to a larger and more diverse population.
