Yasue Yamazumi
Kyoritsu Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan
Title: A Study on the Work Motivation of Japanese Nurses
Biography
Biography: Yasue Yamazumi
Abstract
Purpose : The turnover rate of nurses in 2016 was 10.9%. The reason for this decrease was that they thought there was no work motivation. This research clarifies factors that affect Japanese nurses’ work motivation.
Method: I conducted an interview with 16 nurses. During the interview, the nurses were asked questions regarding factors that made them feel work motivation . The interview was recoded to create a verbatim report of each session. The resulting verbatim data were qualitatively analyzed.
Result: Factors that made nurses feel work motivation were "feedback from patients," "time at which they are involved with patients," "patient recovery," "communication," "good relationships in the workplace," and "relationships with supervisors."
Discussion: In Japan, nurses are currently staffed at a nurse:patient ratio of 1:7 in hospitals, and nurses cannot be sufficiently involved with patients because of the insufficiency of the number of nurses. This result suggests that the work motivation of nurses will increase if they can be involved with patients for a longer period of time.
Conclusion: Work motivation has been shown to enhance employees' intention to continue working and also to be closely related to job retention and company performance improvement. Because motivation for a job increases work motivation, it is desirable to improve the workplace environment so that nurses can spend more time to involve themselves with patients.
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K12018.