The Role of Job Characteristics and Personality in Determining the Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover of Certified Nurse Anesthetists in the United States

The Role of Job Characteristics and Personality in Determining the Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover of Certified Nurse Anesthetists in the United States Importance and Key Contribution Certified Registered Nurse... [ view full abstract ]

The Role of Job Characteristics and Personality in Determining the Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover of Certified Nurse Anesthetists in the United States


Importance and Key Contribution

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) are essential members of a surgical team. Turnover of CRNAs is important because CRNAs, like other highly trained healthcare professionals, are difficult and expensive to replace.

Nurses who are dissatisfied with their jobs and who feel burned out may be more likely to quit their jobs. Even if dissatisfied nurses do not quit their jobs, dissatisfaction and burnout can negatively affect both the quality and cost of patient care. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that influence CRNA job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover.

We analyze data collected from a random sample of CNRAs in the United States. Our model is estimated using a structural equation model in which: (1) job satisfaction is a function of job characteristics, personality factors, and demographic characteristics; (2) employee burnout is a function of job characteristics, personality factors, and demographic characteristics; and (3) turnover is a function job satisfaction and burnout.

Our study will add to the body of knowledge on CRNA turnover by providing evidence on the determinants of job satisfaction and burnout, and on the impact of job satisfaction and burnout on turnover. As a consequence, our study provides information for management interventions to reduce the turnover of employees who are critical to medical care, and who are difficult and expensive to replace; our study also facilitates future research concerning how to reduce turnover.

Theoretical Base

Turnover intention has been defined as “the last in a sequence of withdrawal cognitions, a set to which thinking of quitting and intent to search for alternative employment also belongs” (Tett & Meyer, 1993, p. 262). Studies of employee turnover frequently focus on turnover intentions rather than actual employee turnover because actual turnover is predicted by turnover intentions (Mobley et al., 1978), and studying turnover intentions allows managers to understand what they can do to influence turnover intentions before employees actually quit their jobs.

Job satisfaction has been defined as “the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values” (Locke, 1969, p. 316). Previous research has found that nurse job satisfaction is associated with job characteristics (Aiken et al., 2011; Nantsupawat et al., 2011). Adams and Bond (2000) concluded that job characteristics are more important in predicting job satisfaction than individual nurse demographic characteristics, although Ingersoll et al. (2000) found older nurses to be more satisfied than younger nurses.

Burnout has been defined as “…a syndrome of exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment” (Demerouti et al., 2001, p. 499). Burnout has been hypothesized to be associated with two factors: high job demands and low job resources (Demerouti et al., 2001). Job demands have been found to be more important predictors of burnout than job resources (Bakker et al., 2014). Employee personality factors have been found to be important predictors of burnout (Bakker et al., 2014).

Personality is widely used for predicting individuals’ work behaviors (Tett et al., 1991) because one’s personality helps explain how one processes and responds to various situational cues and environmental features in the workplace (e.g., Meyer et al., 2010; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Tett & Burnett, 2003). Personality traits have been shown to affect job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and intentions to quit (Jenkins, 1993).

Research Questions and Method

Based on the literature, we developed the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Job satisfaction is positively impacted by job characteristics (skill variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from the job).
Hypothesis 2: Job satisfaction is positively impacted by personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness).
Hypothesis 3: Burnout is positively impacted by job characteristics (skill variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from the job).
Hypothesis 4: Burnout is positively impacted by personality characteristics (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness).
Hypothesis 5: Turnover intention is positively impacted by job satisfaction.
Hypothesis 6: Turnover intention is negatively impacted by burnout.

CRNAs included in our sample had to be a member of the AANA and actively practicing. A randomized sample was collected via an electronic questionnaire with six sections: (1) demographic data, (2) turnover intent, (3) personality, (4) burnout, (5) work engagement, and (6) work context. Turnover intent was measured with a single item. We abridged four established instruments: the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (16 items), the Work & Well-Being Survey (9 items) to measure work engagement, and the Job Diagnostic Survey (12 items) to measure work context.

The average participant is 48 years old, has 16.5 years of experience, and worked for their current employer for 8.4 years. Of the 266 participants, 60% are male, 72% are employed fulltime, 18.1% work in an academic hospital, and 23.3% intend on leaving their current place of employment within the next two years.

Findings

A structural equation model was estimated in IBM SPSS AMOS (version 22.0). Our preliminary results show that Hypothesis 1 was partially supported: only autonomy had a significant positive impact on job satisfaction at p < 0.001. Hypothesis 2 was not supported: none of the Big Five personality factors had a significant impact on job satisfaction. Hypothesis 3 was partially supported: autonomy (p < 0.05) and skill variety (p < 0.05) had significant positive impacts on burnout. Hypothesis 4 was partially supported: agreeableness (p < 0.05), stability (p < 0.001), and openness (p < 0.05) significantly decreased burnout. Hypothesis 5 was supported: job satisfaction decreased turnover intention (p < 0.001). Hypothesis 6 was supported: burnout increased turnover intention (p < 0.05).

Implications

Taken together, our results suggest that employers should structure CNRA jobs to feature greater skill variety and greater autonomy, which will result in higher job satisfaction, less burnout, and lower turnover intentions. The literature then suggests that as a result of these changes, nurse anesthetists will have better health and better job performance, resulting in increases in the quality of patient care and decreases in cost (Bakker et al., 2014).

References

Adams, A. & Bond, S. (2000). Hospital nurses job satisfaction, individual and organizational characteristics. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32, 536–543.

Aiken, L. H., Cimiotti, J. P., Sloane, D. M., Smith, H. L., Flynn, L., & Neff, D. F. (2011). The effects of nurse staffing and nurse education on patient deaths in hospitals with different nurse work environments. Medical care, 49(12), 1047

Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E., & Sanz-Vergel, A.I. (2014). Burnout and work engagement: The JD-R approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology Organizational Behavior, 1: 389-411.

Demerouti, E., Bakker, A.B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W.B (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 499-512.

Ingersoll, G.L., McIntosh, E., & Williams, M. (2000). Nurse‐sensitive outcomes of advanced practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32: 1272-1281.

Jenkins, J.M. (1993). Self‐monitoring and turnover: The impact of personality on intent to leave. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14: 83-91.

Judge, T.A., Heller, D., & Mount, M.K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of applied psychology, 87: 530.

Locke, E. A. (1969). What is job satisfaction? Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 4: 309-336.

Meyer, R.D., Dalal, R.S., & Hermida, R. (2010). A review and synthesis of situational strength in the organizational sciences. Journal of Management, 36: 121-140.

Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological review, 102: 246.

Mobley, W., Horner, S., Hollingsworth, A. (1978). An evaluation of precursors of hospital employee turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 63: 408-414.

Nantsupawat, A., Srisuphan, W., Kunaviktikul, W., Wichaikhum, O.A., Aungsuroch, Y., & Aiken, L.H. (2011). Impact of nurse work environment and staffing on hospital nurse and quality of care in Thailand. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 43: 426-432.

Tett, R.P., & Burnett, D.D. (2003). A personality trait-based interactionist model of job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 500.

Tett, R.P., & Meyer, J.P. (1993). Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and turnover: Path analyses based on meta‐analytic findings. Personnel Psychology, 46: 259-293.

Tett, R.P., Jackson, D.N., & Rothstein, M. (1991). Personality measures as predictors of job performance: A meta‐analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 44: 703-742.

turnover burnout job satisfaction job characteristics personality nurse nurse anesthetists [ view full abstract ]

turnover
burnout
job satisfaction
job characteristics
personality
nurse
nurse anesthetists