Does Tailor Different Educational Programs for Different Groups Might Improve Acceptance by Nursing Staff?

Abstract

Background: Long-term shortages in the nursing workforce and high turnover rates are common in Taiwan medical industry. Little research has investigated the psychological factors associated with retention of nursing staff. However, in practice, religious hospitals often provide education in medicine or the medical humanities to enhance psychological satisfaction. The objective of this study was to explore factors influencing nursing staff’s retention with their work across different levels of demand. A further objective was to investigate whether medical humanities educations were associated with the retention of nursing staff. Methods: This study used self-administrated questionnaires to survey nurses working in northern areas of Taiwan. The questionnaire design was based on the six levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Participation was voluntary and participants signed informed consent documents. Self-administrated questionnaires were administered by contacting a total of 759 participants; 729 questionnaires were returned (response rate 96.04 %). A logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the impact of seniority of nursing work on nurses reported intention to stay after adjusting for nurse characteristics (gender and age).Results: In the Pearson correlation analysis, nurses’ willingness to stay was moderately correlated with “physical needs”, “safety needs”, “love and belonging needs”, and “esteem needs” (r=0.559, P<0.001; r=0.533, P<0.001; r=0.393, P<0.001; r=0.476, P<0.001, respectively). Furthermore, nurses’ willingness to stay was highly correlated with “self-actualization needs”, “behind self-actualization needs” and “medical humanities education relevant” (r=0.707, P<0.001; r=0.728, P<0.001; r=0.678, P<0.001, respectively). We found that the odds ratio (OR) of retention of nursing staff who worked within 1 year (OR=4.511, P=0.002) and 1-3 years (OR=3.248, P=0.003) was significantly higher referred to those who worked 5-10 years.Conclusions: With regard to medical humanities education, we recommend adjusting the training as the compulsory activities under the official programs are inadequate and adjusting the required hours of medical humanities education. Tailoring different educational programs for different groups (especially for the groups of nurses who have worked 3-5 years and 5-10 years in the case study hospital) might improve acceptance by nursing staff.