How career facilitators and barriers influence nurses' professional turnover intention

Abstract

Aims: Our study investigates the influence of career facilitators and barriers on nurses' improvement of their professional capabilities and their professional turnover intention.

Background: Reducing nurses' professional turnover intention could help alleviate the global nursing shortage. Nevertheless, little research has addressed how career facilitators and barriers, nurses' improvement of their professional capabilities and professional turnover intention are related, indicating a gap.

Design: This study used a cross-sectional design.

Methods: We surveyed 502 out of 2,660 full-time nurses who worked for a medical centre in Taiwan between January-March 2018. Our items were adapted from Cunningham et al. and Teng et al. and had adequate reliability and validity. Structural equation modelling was used to test the study hypotheses.

Results: Human capital, social capital, and discrimination were positively related to intention to improve professional capabilities. Moreover, intention to improve professional capabilities was positively related to action to improve professional capabilities, which was negatively related to professional turnover intention.

Conclusion: Most of the career facilitators and even barriers, boost the improvement of professional capabilities and are useful for retaining nurses in the nursing profession.

Impact: Findings of this study should have an impact on nursing managers by offering them means to retain nurses, for example, enhancing human capital and social capital among nurses to reduce their turnover intention.

Keywords: career; nurses; structural equation modelling; survey; turnover.