Burden and Manager’s Support Regarding the Traveling of Home Care Nurses and Their Intention to Remain Employed: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the relationship between the work-related burden of traveling and the manager's support for home care nurses and home care nurses' intention to remain employed.Methods: A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted with homecare nurses and managers working at 103 home-nursing provider offices. A multilevel binomial logistic regression analysis was conducted with the intention to remain employed as the dependent variable.Results: Responses from 38 managers and 221 home care nurses (effective response rate: 32.5%) were analyzed. The mean age of the home care nurses was 46.4 ± 7.9 years, 214 (96.8%) were female, and 151 (68.3%) had the intention to remain employed. The burden of traveling expressed as inefficient visit schedules (Odds Ratio(OR) = 0.41, 95% Confidence Interval(CI): 0.22-0.78), and managers' support, expressed as sharing accessible routes to travel (OR = 2.49, 95% CI: 1.20-5.17), ensuring visit intervals (OR = 2.72, 95% CI: 1.19-6.21 ), and providing estimated travel time (OR = 0.43, 95% CI: 0.21-0.92), were associated with home care nurses' intention to remain employed.Conclusions: These results suggest that developing management support systems regarding the travel itself, such as ensuring intervals between visits, sharing accessible routes to travel, and providing an estimated travel time, may be useful for supporting home care nurses' intention to remain employed.