Work Motivation for Japanese Nursing Assistants in Small- to Medium-Sized Hospitals

Abstract

Nursing assistants can work without a professional certification to help registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. Nursing assistants engage in various tasks, e.g., washing laundry, cleaning up, and clerk tasks regarding nursing. Enhancing work motivation among nursing assistants is essential for every hospital, because when nursing assistants do their jobs well, it allows registered nurses and licensed practical nurses to complete their own specialized jobs. We examined the predictors significantly associated with nursing assistants' work motivation. For those predictors, we produced items to examine job satisfaction. Those items are classified into intrinsic and extrinsic facets. The subjects for this study were Japanese nursing assistants working in 26 hospitals with 62-376 beds (4 public and 22 private hospitals). A total of 516 nursing assistants were analyzed, with the average age and standard deviation of 42.7 ± 12.9 years; the age of 456 female subjects was 43.8 ± 12.7 years and that of 60 male subjects was 34.3 ± 11.0 years. Our results show that "work motivation" is significantly associated with "free time to do one's own things," "nursing assistants as important partners on the job," "feeling helpful to patients," "participating in decision making," and "job-skill improvement." Free time to do one's own things is an extrinsic item. Hospital administrators must monitor the workload and their quality of life among nursing assistants. All the other significant items are intrinsic. Nursing assistants are not only motivated by money. They highly value the intrinsic nature and experience of their jobs.

Japanese Professional Nurses Spend Unnecessarily Long Time Doing Nursing Assistants' Tasks

“…Therefore, enhancing work motivation among nursing assistants is also essential for hospitals. In our previous study (Kudo et al 2011), nursing assistants, as do professional nurses, also value the intrinsic nature of their jobs. Because they do not have a certification of professional nurses, their jobs are limited.…”

Feelings about Nursing Assistants that Enhance the Work Motivation of Japanese Registered Nurses and Licensed Practical Nurses

“…The first author reported that nursing assistants' work motivation was significantly associated with job-skill improvement, participating in decision making, treating nursing assistants as important partners on the job, and feeling helpful to patients [6]. Although the job responsibilities of nursing assistants are limited compared to those of professional nurses, nursing assistants highly value the intrinsic nature of their jobs.…”

“…We asked the subjects to respond yes or no to these two items. The first author investigated how to use nursing assistants effectively [5,6]. While conducting these studies, the first author often heard from staff members at nursing sites that when a nursing assistant is older than a professional nurse, that young professional nurse respects the older nursing assistant and voluntarily does tasks that nursing assistants should do.…”

“…Hospital managers need to properly understand professional nurses' feelings toward nursing assistants and then reflect upon those feelings in order to help them improve their working environments. Previous studies have suggested ways of using nursing assistants more effectively [5][6][7][8], for example: measuring the time professional nurses spend doing simple tasks that should be done by nursing assistants (e.g., laundry, cleaning, and waste disposal) [5]; improving nursing assistants' work motivation [6]; and investigating the predictors of nursing assistants' desire to be helpful to professional nurses [7]. To our knowledge, however, there are no studies that examine the associations between professional nurses' feelings toward nursing assistants and professional nurses' work motivation.…”

Procjena kvaliteta rada u organizaciji sestrinske službe Doma zdravlja Foča

“…Unapređenje kvaliteta rada zdravstvenih ustanova, kao i svakodnevnih aktivnosti svih zaposlenih u zdravstvu je kontinuirani proces čiji je cilj dostizanje višeg nivoa efektivnosti u radu, kao i većeg zadovoljstva pacijenata [2]. Standardi su konvencionalno utvrđena i prihvaćena mjerila koja služe kao uzor za djelovanje, ponašanje, uslove rada, a djeluju kao vodiči [1,2]. Kriterijumi predstavljaju pokazatelje kao što su nivo obrazovanja, znanja i vještina medicinske sestre i stanja, ponašanja pacijenata [3].…”