EMPLOYEE RETENTION OF REGISTERED NURSES IN A MALAYSIAN PRIVATE HOSPITAL: A PILOT STUDY

Abstract

Background: Employee retention among registered nurses working in a hospital is one of the most challenging existing global issues. This study aims to develop a pilot study for employee retention of registered nurses working in medical and medical wards in one of the tertiary hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Methods: The pilot study was performed after the approval of Ethics Committee. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 30 respondents with informed consent. This study measures the variables of family social support, employee engagement, working environment and condition, manager and peer support and development opportunities on job satisfaction as a mediator to dependent variable, employee retention. Descriptive analysis and reliability analysis were used to analyse the data via statistical analysis in IBM SPSS version 23.0. Results 100% of the registered nurses working in medical surgical wards were females and 50% of them were Malays. 70% of them were 30 years old and above. 66.7% nursing working experience in the current hospital fall in between 1 month to 5 years and 73.3% average working hours per day were in between 7 – 10 hours. The Cronbach's alpha in each variable is ranging from 0.882 to 0.950. The overall construct of Cronbach's alpha is 0.972. Conclusion: The reliability analysis findings affirm that family social support, employee engagement, working environment and condition, manager and peer support, development opportunities, job satisfaction and employee retention are having high level of internal consistency prior proceeding to actual study.