Quality of Work Life of Nurses and its Impact on their Job Satisfaction

The Quality of Work Life (QWL) and Job Satisfaction are important factors which greatly influence turnover among nursing staff. A satisfied employee tends to be less absent, makes positive contribution, greatly contented, and stays with the organization. Objectives: To assess the Quality of Work Life and Job Satisfaction of Nurses, To find out the Impact of Quality of Work Life on Job Satisfaction, To associate the Quality of Work Life and Job Satisfaction with the selected demographic variables.

Setting: Tertiary care hospital, Thrissur, Kerala which is a 1500 bedded hospital always have a census of about 1200 inpatients.

Methods: The method employed in this study was non experimental - descriptive survey. The samples were drawn through simple random sampling technique. The sample size was 300 nurses who has been working here for at least six months and more. The data were gathered directly from the respondents with the help of structured questionnaire with in 3 months period and analyzed by using both descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: Overall level of Quality of Work Life of the 300 nurses related to the work environment lies in the range of 19.54±2.6, and Overall level of Job Satisfaction of 300 nurses related to the Working Condition lies in the range of 18.25±3.60 and the Correlation Co-efficient between the Quality of Work Life of Nurses and Level of Job Satisfaction is + 0.8. There is a strong Positive Correlation between the Quality of Work Life of Nurses and level of Job Satisfaction; that is when the Quality of Work Life increases the level of Job Satisfaction also increases. In the x² Test, significant association was found (P<0.95) between marital status and their Quality of Work Life. Whereas there was no significant association found between the other demographic variables with the Quality of Work Life or job satisfaction.

Conclusion: To improve Job Satisfaction, more attention should be paid to improve the Quality of Work Life. Quality of Work Life helps employees to feel secure and they are being thought of and cared for by the organization in which they work.