Relationships between coping strategies, individual characteristics and job satisfaction in a sample of hospital nurses: cross-sectional questionnaire survey.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to describe and compare the job satisfaction, coping strategies, personal and organizational characteristics among nurses working in a hospital in Turkey.

METHODS: In this cross-sectional survey design study, 186 nurses from Cumhuriyet University Hospital completed Personal Data Form, Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and Ways of Coping Inventory. Response rate was 74.4%.

RESULTS: In this study, it was found that job satisfaction score of nurses showed moderate (mean: 3.46+/-0.56) was found. While nurses mostly used to employ self-confident and optimistic approaches that had already being considered as positive coping strategies with stress, yielding and helpless approaches were employed less than that. While a statistically significant positive relation (p<0.05) was found between job satisfaction and dimensions of Ways of Coping Inventory "self-confident approach" and "optimistic approach", negative relation (p<0.01) was found between job satisfaction and dimensions of the "helpless approach". Organizational and individual nurse characteristics were not found to be associated with job satisfaction. But, job satisfaction of the nurses who is bounded by a contract was found higher than that of permanent staff nurses (p<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: The job satisfaction of Turkish hospital nurses was at a moderate and that of the nurses who succeeded to coping with the stress was heightened. Higher levels of job satisfaction were associated with positive coping strategies. This study contributes to a growing body of evidence demonstrating the importance of coping strategies to nurses' job satisfaction.