Factors affecting the job satisfaction of nurses working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Objective: The study was carried out as a descriptive study in order to investigate the factors affecting the job satisfaction of nurses working in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) between March 1 and May 30, 2012. Methods: The study was conducted in the neonatal intensive care units of two state hospitals located in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. The study population consisted of 96 nurses, working in the neonatal intensive care units of two state hospitals located in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. It was planned to work with the whole study population, without performing any sampling. However, 10 nurses were excluded from the study, because of they were on leave. Besides, some nurses were unwilling to participate in the study. The study was performed with 86 nurses. The data were collected by face-to-face interview method using “Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire” and “Personal Information Form”, which was created by researchers in the light of the literature to reveal the demographic and professional characteristics of nurses. The study data were evaluated in SPSS 17.0 software. Numerical, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated, andMann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, and independent samples t-tests were used. Results: Nurses’ mean score of the intrinsic satisfaction was 3.47±0.43, the extrinsic satisfaction mean score was 3.08±0.66 and the total mean score of job satisfaction was 3.32±0.49. Conclusion: In this study, it was determined that the nurses have moderate intrinsic, extrinsic and total job satisfaction. It was also shown that the educational level, total work year and professional position of NICU nurses and, the relationships with colleagues and managers of them have a significant effect on job satisfaction.