What is a Healthy Workplace?

“A healthy work environment for nurses is a practice setting that maximizes the health and well-being of nurses, quality patient outcomes and organizational performance.”

Healthy workplaces are one of the key cornerstones to ensuring the retention and job satisfaction of RNs. Without a healthy workplace, working conditions could become stagnant or deteriorate, leaving patient care at risk. Over the past few years, elements of work life have been examined to determine what nurses need to ensure they are at their healthiest, and able to support their patients. Areas of work life that are known to be required for a healthy work environment include: perception of contributions to decisions affecting patients and practice control; access to continuing education and recognition of clinical excellence, and salary levels.

Perception of contributions to decisions affecting patients and practice control
For RNs to feel that they are a valuable component of any health-care team, they must be able to practice within their full scope of practice and contribute to the health of patients and their families in a meaningful way. RNs know that they make valuable contributions to their patients’ lives, but they also want the opportunity to use their knowledge and skills to participate in decisions that directly affect patient care. An RNAO survey published in October 2002, Tracking the nursing task force: RNs rate their nursing work life, indicated that over half the respondents (51 per cent) rated their abilities to participate in practice related decisions as good or very good, and these individuals were also likely to perceive that they would have a great deal of decision making influence in the future. It is also important for nurses to feel that their voice has an influence by being able to access a professional nursing resource at a senior level. In the October 2002 study, over 80 per cent of those surveyed indicated the senior person responsible was a registered nurse.

One of the key factors in recruiting and retaining nurses is for nurses to work in environments where they feel there is a reasonable workload. When nurses are happy with their nurse to patient ratios, they are more loyal to their employers. In an age when nurses are faced with ever increasing nurse patient ratios, nurses who are able to work consistently with the same patients felt a greater commitment to their work; the findings suggested that consistent patient assignments were linked to a nurse’s perception of his or her organization’s commitment to nursing. Job satisfaction was also found to correlate with the amount of control nurses had over shift patterns. Unfortunately, only a minority of respondents reported having very flexible shift work environments.

Feeling influential in decision-making and shift flexibility not only increases the quality of working life for RNs, but these factors also improve patient care. Those nurses who are able to have a higher degree of influence over decisions relating to practice and shifts worked experience a high level of job satisfaction that directly translates into good quality patient care.

Access to continuing care and recognition of clinical excellence
As patients require increasingly complex care, it becomes imperative that nurses are able to access educational opportunities. Over 70 per cent of those surveyed for the 2002 survey reported fair, good or very good access to continuing education. Educational opportunities are a key retention strategy; in fact, many RNs have reported leaving employers because of a lack of access to education. Once RNs have gone to the lengths to obtain extra education, the opportunity to be recognized for their clinical excellence is also of the utmost importance. Access to education through formal academic courses or workshops is crucial for RNs to continue to provide the care their patients require. As the Canadian population ages, patients will need the kind of complex care that can only be provided by nurses who have received sound educational background.

Salary levels
While RNs did not enter the profession to become wealthy, the fact remains that salaries are still a crucial element in determining overall work satisfaction. Inequities in remuneration in nursing areas such as the community sector not only contribute to a lower level of loyalty to the employer at the present moment, they may also dissuade future RNs from taking a position in the community sector, opting instead for a higher paying area . Stabilizing human resources in the other community related fields would help maintain a high quality of care that is necessary to provide preventative care at the community level.

Nurses in all sectors play a fundamental role in the long-term sustainability of Canada’s health-care system. Nurses who work in healthy, stable work environments can provide the best possible care for their patients and ensure that Canadians are able to live healthy, active lives.

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Adapted from: Tracking the Nursing Task Force (1999): RNs Rate their Nursing Work Life. Referencing this page?