The role of job satisfaction, work engagement, self-efficacy and agentic capacities on nurses' turnover intention and patient satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: Nurses' voluntary turnover is a worrying global phenomenon which affects service quality. Retaining nursing staff within a hospital is important to eliminate the negative influence of voluntary turnover on the quality of care and organisation costs.

OBJECTIVES: This research helps explain nurses' voluntary turnover by analysing the role of self-efficacy, agentic capacities, job satisfaction, and work engagement on hospital turnover intention, and to study the relationships between these variables and patient satisfaction.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: This study gathered data from 194 nurses and 181 patients from 22 inpatient wards at two hospitals in southern Italy.

RESULTS: Correlation analysis revealed that job satisfaction, work engagement, self-efficacy and agentic capacities were positively interrelated and negatively correlated with turnover intention. Path analysis showed that self-efficacy, some agentic capacities (anticipation and self-regulation), job satisfaction, and work engagement had direct or indirect effects on nurses' turnover intention, and that job satisfaction exerted a stronger effect on turnover intention. Also, patient satisfaction was positively correlated with nurses' job satisfaction, work engagement, self-efficacy, self-regulation and anticipation and negatively correlated with nurses' turnover intention.

CONCLUSION: Results highlighted the importance of implementing actions (for example through feedforward methodology and the goal setting technique) to improve self-efficacy, self-regulation skill, work engagement and job satisfaction in order to reduce nurses' turnover intention and increase patient satisfaction with nursing care.