Journal of advanced nursing
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This study examines the relationship between job satisfaction of nursing faculty and the organizational characteristics of the institutions and nursing programmes in which they teach. A stratified random sample of 48 baccalaureate nursing programmes throughout the United States was selected for the study, of which 25 (52%) of the programme deans agreed to participate. Two questionnaires were used in data collection: (a) The Job Descriptive Index (Revised), which was sent to 576 nursing faculty at the participating programmes, resulting in 327 (57%) usable questionnaires; and (b) The Organizational Characteristics Questionnaire which was completed by the nursing programmes deans. ⋯ The organizational characteristics examined were: institutional control (public, private), size (student enrolment), nursing degrees offered, programmes offered (undergraduate, graduate), number of nursing faculty, number of nursing students, budget, tenure and salary. Although nursing faculty tended to be satisfied with their jobs, correlation and multiple regression analyses indicated weak to negligible relationships between job satisfaction and the organizational characteristics examined. Further study of the dimensions of job satisfaction within the academic environment is needed to understand the complexity of these relationships fully.
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The problem of aggression to staff in a general hospital was examined from the perspective of Poyner & Warne's (1986) model of workplace violence. A total of 396 staff (39% response rate) provided information on their experience of violence in the past year and a subsample were additionally interviewed about their current levels of mental health (GHQ). Some 72 staff (21% of respondents had been physically assaulted and 90% of these assaulted staff worked beyond the accident and emergency department, e.g. in medical wards. ⋯ Postoperative confusion, receiving treatment and delayed treatment were common precursors of aggression. Mental health was significantly worse amongst staff exposed to threats (P < 0.01). This exploratory study establishes that violence is a problem across a number of general hospital departments and occupations and we argue that effective training should be made more available for staff at risk of assault.