Generational differences in nursing job satisfaction and attrition

¶ … Age Groups and the Nursing Profession

Job satisfaction in nursing related to generational age differences

Attrition among nurses has been a worrying topic to not only the society but the government and the related agencies in specific. This is due to the evident lack of interest in the nursing related field in the recent years, as more students opt for courses that are IT related rather than the nursing related courses. With the generation Y increasingly ignoring the nursing related courses and the baby boomers retiring each day, there is bound to be a gap in the nurses' numbers within the health care facilities, a trend that medics foresee just getting worse each passing year. Apparently, there is a generational influence or trend noticed in the perception of the nursing profession as will be further portrayed in the research data herein. This trend has led to a dire need for more practitioners within the nursing fraternity and a reducing ratio of nurses to patients each passing year. This is the great challenge that the nursing in America is facing now and needs to be addressed in light of the generational gap that may be causing the shift away from the hitherto considered noble profession.

Participants in the study

The participants, in the concept of this paper will be those people from whom data and information will be obtained. They will also be referred to as respondents in other instances since they will be responding to a set of questions as will be requested from them. For the purpose of this study, there will be 50 participants ore respondents that will be used, 25 of them will be from the baby boomers generation and the other 25 will be from the Y generation. This will ensure an accurate capture of views and sentiments from both generations concerning nursing as a profession. Further, the 50 participants will be selected on the basis of being registered nurses who are between the ages of 30 to 65 years and these respondents will be those who have practiced general nursing. The participants will be sourced from two selected hospitals that must be at least two counties apart in order to get a diverse data collection. The hospital authorities will be contacted in order to get their permission to engage their staff in the research and the individuals will also be taken through the process and recruited upon their consent.

Problem outline

The Californian AB 394 bill indicates that the ideal nurses to patient ratio needs to be at an all time of one registered nurse for every four patients (Spetz J., et.al, 2002), this is the recommended ration within an ideal health care system. This ratio and law that was put forth by this bill has been used and recommended in several other states and considered the ideal measure, at least on paper. However, in the real sense, the implementation of this law or recommendation of the bill has been a great challenge to most health facilities.

The seriousness of this low nurses to patient ratio can be clearly exemplified in the statistics that have been recorded in the previous times in the nursing fraternity. In 2002, there was a shortage of 125,000 nurses across the country, translating to a 65% of the required full time nursing practitioners required. The American Health Care Association also indicated that in 2007 there were 116,000 open vacancies to be filled in the nursing field, further in 2008 there were 19,000 chances available an indication that the healthcare fraternity is ever in dire xneed of nurses each year. In the same trend, it is estimated that well over 900,000 nurses have reached the age of 50 years and over hence are scheduled for retirement soon, hence a looming gap upon the retirement of thus massive number of aged nurses (KaiserEDU.org., 2012).

Proposed solution

Bearing the seriousness of the issue taking into account the fact that the most affected by the low nurses to patient ratio are the patients, it is of great significance to solve the issue in a manner that will give a long-term solution within this profession. First suggestion would be to increase the levels and means of motivation among the nurses, these do not only include the monetary compensation but there is need to learn from other professions and see how they handle their employees and bring out the intrinsic motivation among them. There is also need for having reward system that takes care of the highly performing nurses just as it is in the other professions. The curriculum that is used in teaching the nursing students also needs to be revised and made to reflect the contemporary situation on the ground within this profession, this will reduce the discrepancy between the taught and the experienced issues on the ground hence lessen the discomfort once one gets into the practice.

Research question

The research question in this case will be, what are the significant differences in how the generation Y and the baby boomers perceive job satisfaction within the nursing profession and what effects does it have?

Data collection process

The data collection process is the most significant in this entire process and the survey monkey will be the preferred mode of data collection in this study. The participants will be contacted for their consent and the confidentiality of the data on survey monkey will be assured since it will be kept encrypted throughout and eventually I will destroy the kept information after two years since by then it shall have sufficiently contributed to my academic process. The data collection tool chosen above was considered the best due to the ability to have data that is structured and measurable. The type of questions that will be posed to the participants will strive to;

Get their perspective on the nursing profession

Get their levels of satisfaction in the nursing field.

Get the perspective on the influence of generational differences on the nursing field.

Find out what motivates them to remain in the nursing field.

Gauge their take on other budding fields like the IT.

Further, the research method that will be used here will be the correlational research method that will be used to study the two variable, the generational difference and the levels of satisfaction within the nursing fraternity.

Techniques of data analysis

There will be use of grouped data analysis here since it will be the best bearing the nature of the topic being studied here. There will be a use of drawing out of patterns in the responses that will be received from the survey monkey. This will enable the drawing out of general feeling and attitude towards the nursing profession and the reasons behind the varying attitudes in line with the generations. The qualitative comparative analysis will also be employed since it will allow for the depiction of the varying reasons behind why the research question. There will also be an inductive approach to this analysis where an emergent framework will be employed to group the data and the relationship in the data highlighted.