The aim of this study was to examine the level of psychological health and job satisfaction and to find out which predictors have an impact on nurses' psychological health and job satisfaction. Six hundred forty nurses from surgery and internal medicine departments from Slovenian hospitals participated in the research. Data analysis was carried out by using SPSS 25.0. With transformational leadership style, leaders' characteristics, leaders' emotional intelligence, leaders' communication skills, positive effectivity, and job satisfaction, one can explain 57% of nurses' psychological health. The results indicated that 85% of nurses had good psychological health. And also that more frequent exposure to stress and lack of stress management were associated with poor psychological health. The employees' psychological health does not affect only the individual, but also on the quality of care and on the effectiveness of hospitals. It is important to monitor employees' job satisfaction and take care for employees' health by providing a healthy work environment.
TopIntroduction
Hospitals play an important role in the health care system. They are health care institutions that have an organized medical and other professional staff, and deliver medical, nursing and related services 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Hospitals offer a varying range of acute, convalescent and terminal care using diagnostic and curative services in response to acute and chronic conditions, arising from diseases as well as injuries and genetic anomalies (WHO, 2016a).
It is well known that the health-care system in all European and others industrial countries across the world face with a serious shortage of nurses (Boamah & Laschinger, 2016) and that it is facing rapidly increasing needs for patient care in an aging population (Kovner et al., 2016; Leineweber et al., 2016).This situation has made the nursing profession more stressful and susceptible to turnover (Chiang & Chang, 2012) This situation is worsening because of the aging of the working population and the decreasing rates of nurses entering the labor market (Shultz & Adams, 2007). WHO (2010) identified that 57 countries to be in a crisis relative to their health care work force. In the coming decades, the redistribution of the population toward older adults will reduce the relative size of the working population to the non-working older adult population, and also increase the need for workers to provide healthcare services to the ageing population (Hirst, 2019). Demands of nurses at work are high, work conditions change rapidly, and nurses are supposed to ensure high standards of quality (Collin, Paloniemi & Mecklin, 2010) and to effectively handle complex situations (Shin & Kim, 2013). Obviously, there are inherent tensions in nursing, such as time pressure, staff shortages, and increasing demands for high performance (Gartmeier, Gruber & Heid, 2010). The nursing shortage presents challenges for policy makers at all levels of government in countries all over the world. Hirst (2019) noted some of the factors driving the nursing shortage, like inadequate human resources planning and management, the ageing nursing workforce, internal and external migration, and high attrition which are the consequence of poor work environments, low professional satisfaction, low social status, and inadequate salary.
The importance of effective leadership in health care was exposed many times (Giltinane, 2013; Grimm, 2010; Nelsey & Brownie, 2012). Leadership in nursing is pivotal because nurses represent the most extensive discipline in health care, they are also the main working group in hospitals and play a vital role in the caring system of every country (Marquis & Huston, 2009; Sullivan & Garland, 2010; WHO, 2013). The nurses' job assignment as health team members is very important, they must to preserve and promote the quality of care to a standard level (Mohammmadi et al., 2011), but there is a problem because the average age of nurses in developed countries increasing (WHO, 2013). Nursing is a profession that involves interaction with different people (patients, their families, other nurses, doctors and various specialists), emotional and physical work in a very challenging environment (Purcell, Kutash, & Cobb, 2011; Scheick, 2011). According to the progress and development, working conditions are constantly changing, including strategies for increasing productivity and reducing costs and maintaining quality of care (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber, 2002). Nursing is an emotional and physical strenuous job, and studies show that work in health care poses a major risk for the occurrence of stress, anxiety and depression (Gershon et al., 2007). Burnout is associated with psychological disorders, physical illness, decrease work productivity and an increase work absence (Ahola et al., 2008). Chronic work stress and burnout in nursing are related to consequences for psychological and physical symptoms (Melamed, Shirom, Toker, Berliner, & Shapira, 2006; Salvagioni et al., 2017). The field of work, as well as age, education (Gómez‐Urquiza, Vargas, De la Fuente, Fernandez-Castillo,. &Canadas-De la Fuente, 2017; Hatch et al., 2018) gender, marital status and children (Canadas-de la Fuente et al., 2018) play an important role of nurses' burnout.