Effects of the organizational culture type, job satisfaction, and job stress on nurses' happiness: A cross-sectional study of the long-term care hospitals of South Korea.

AIM: It was aimed to explore the effects of the long-term-care (LTC) hospital-nurse organizational culture type, job satisfaction, and job stress on nurses' happiness.

METHODS: Included were 226 participants who were randomly selected among the nurses who were working in 17 LTC hospitals with ≥100 beds, located in five cities in South Korea. A multiple regression analysis was carried out in order to examine the factors affecting the happiness of the nurses.

RESULTS: The happiness of the LTC hospital nurses was not high. Regarding the factors affecting their happiness, a higher feeling of happiness was evident when the estimation of their subjective health status was healthier, when they were in an organization with hierarchy-oriented culture properties, when they expressed a higher job satisfaction regarding autonomy, and when the number of task requests was lower. Among these factors, autonomy-based job satisfaction exerts the greatest effect.

CONCLUSION: Based on these results, the development of personal health improvement programs for nurses' happiness should be required. In addition, hospitals need to be stably operated and managed to ensure organizational safety and the nurse managers should encourage the nurses to carry out their tasks with autonomy.