Intention to Stay and Rn Job Satisfaction: The Influence of Caring Leadership

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between medical surgical RN intention to stay in nursing and the perceived level of job satisfaction, and the mediating effect of caring leadership practices on the interaction between RN intention to stay in nursing and RN job satisfaction.

METHODOLOGY
The medical-surgical RN participants were selected from five medical-surgical units in a Phoenix, AZ hospital. A total of 139 surveys were distributed to the RNs who volunteered to participate, with 65 returned (response rate = 47%). Most participants were females (92%), between 20-to-60 years of age (64%). Twenty-nine percent had an associate degree, 66 percent had a bachelor degree; most had between 1-5 years of nursing experience (37%), with another 31 percent having 6-10 years of experience. In addition to the Leadership Practices Inventory (Observer), they completed the Mueller/McCloskey Satisfaction Scale (Mueller & McCloskey, 1990), and a single item response about their intention to stay. The LPI subscales of Model, Enable, and Encourage were used to compute a measure of “caring leadership practices” (McDowell & Williams, 2015).

KEY FINDINGS
The most frequently used leadership practice by their managers was Enable, followed by Model and Encourage, and then Inspire and Challenge. Intention to stay was singficantly correlated with caring leadership, as well as Model, Inspire, Challenge, and Encourage. The results of a multi-step regression model showed significant moderate positive correlation between overall RN job satisfaction and intention to stay in nursing, a significant positive strong correlation between overall caring leadership practices and RN job satisfaction, and a significant moderate positive correlation between overall caring leadership practices and intention to stay in nursing. The final step of the regression analysis indicated a significant moderate positive correlation with overall RN job satisfaction and overall caring leadership practices predicting intention to stay in nursing. The author notes: “The study results confirmed prior research findings that suggested that leadership practices were important factors that affect nurse job satisfaction and intention to stay in nursing (Osuji et al., 2014, Shacklock & Brunetto, 2011)” (p. 108).