Abstract

Background: Low job satisfaction and high turnover rates are major challenges for nurses in Ethiopia where it has unfavorable influences on the nursing system and quality of nursing care.  But, different authors reported inconsistent proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed in nursing profession in Ethiopia. In addition; the trends and national pooled estimate of proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed in nursing profession is not assessed. Therefore; the aim of this systemic review and meta-analysis is to show the trends, and estimate the national pooled proportion.

Methods: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline was followed to review studies in Ethiopia. Major databases; PubMed, Medline and African Journals Online were included in the review.  Grey literatures like Web of Science, Google scholar and repository online library in universities in Ethiopian were searched. Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instrument was used for critical appraisal. The meta-analysis was conducted using STATA-11. Descriptive information of studies was presented in narrative form and quantitative results were presented in forest plots. The Cochran Q test and I² test statistics were used to survey heterogeneity. The pooled estimated proportion with 95% confidence intervals were computed.

Results: A total of 12 articles were included in this study. The proportion of job satisfaction is declining from 2014 (59.6%) to 2019 (48%) while intention to remain employed is increasing from 2014 (39%) to 2017 (86.7%). The overall national pooled proportion of job satisfaction among nurses was 54.96 % (95% CI: 48.83%, 61%) while the intention to remain employed was 54.94 % (95% CI: 36.44%, 73.45%).

Conclusions: There is declining of job satisfaction and increasing of intention to remain employed trends across publication years. But, the national pooled proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed are low. Interventions aiming to increases the job satisfaction and intension to remain employed is important.

Keywords: Job satisfaction, Intention to remain employed, Nurses, Ethiopia.