Nancy J. Yanchus

Predictors of Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention in VHA Mental Health Employees: A Comparison Between Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Workers, and Mental Health Nurses

This exploratory study compared job satisfaction and turnover intention among psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and mental health nurses in the Veterans Health Administration, focusing on four predictors: civility, procedural justice, autonomy, and psychological safety. A sample of 11,726 VHA mental health employees was used. Results of the structural equation modeling showed that, for all occupations, civility, procedural justice, and autonomy predicted job satisfaction, which in turn predicted turnover intention. Psychological safety directly predicted turnover intention, a unique finding to this study. There were, however, no differences in the predictors across occupations. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

LGB and Heterosexual Federal Civilian Employee Differences in the Workplace.

This study examined differences in workplace perceptions between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual federal civilian workers across 4 important organizational attitudes: civility, supervisor support, psychological safety, and job satisfaction. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) All-Employee Survey (AES) provided archival data (years 2014 and 2015, n = 189,322 and n = 209,078, respectively). We first examined appropriateness of specific group comparisons using measurement invariance, a valuable but overlooked technique in past research examining LGB and heterosexual differences. Qualitative follow-up analyses of respondents’ open-text comments were also conducted. The quantitative results showed measurement invariance for some, but not all measures. Only the measures with evidence of invariance were included in subsequent pairwise-comparisons, which showed small but statistically significant differences between groups. The lack of invariance for several groups and measures cautions against comparing these populations without first ascertaining that measures used capture comparable views of the examined concepts.

‘You just can’t do it all’: a secondary analysis of nurses' perceptions of teamwork, staffing and workload

The purpose of this study was to re-examine data to explore connections between nurses’ perceptions of teamwork, staffing and workload, focusing on salient aspects and connections, from the nurses’ perspective. Insufficient staffing levels and imbalanced workload distributions are prominent challenges in contemporary healthcare which can cause increased incident reports, medical errors and lower patient satisfaction. Using a novel form of secondary analysis – an original qualitative analysis followed by a quantification of the qualitative data, we found themes of teamwork, staffing and workload were interrelated in the data. When facing workload challenges created by understaffing, participants directly attributed their units’ ability to meet the needs of patient care to levels of teamwork on the unit. We suggest that teamwork in healthcare needs targeted organisational support. In other words, healthcare organisations must systematically approach and monitor the status of nursing teamwork, e.g. implement programmes to develop it as needed, particularly when faced with staffing and workload challenges. Healthcare leaders can learn from and the healthcare delivery workplace can be shaped by listening to teamwork perceptions of nurses.