Variability, shift-specific workloads, and rationed care predictors of work satisfaction among registered nurses providing acute care::a longitudinal study

Aims: The aim of this study was to explore nurses’ shift-work satisfaction variability across time and its shift-specific predictors: perceived workload, patient-to-nurse ratio and rationing of nursing care.Design: Longitudinal study of 90 Registered nurses (N = 1,303 responses) in a Lebanese hospital over 91 days of data collection.Methods: Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were computed to determine shift-work satisfaction variability between individual nurses and working-unit clusters. Generalized linear mixed models were used to explore the workloads and rationed care predictors of nurses’ shift-work satisfaction separately for day and night shifts.Results: Variability in shift-work satisfaction was noted between individual nurses in day (ICC = 0.43) and night shifts (ICC = 0.37), but not between medical/surgical units. Nurses satisfied with their shift-specific work were less probably to ration necessary nursing care (OR = 0.68; 95% CI = 0.60–0.77) in day shifts and to perceive high workload demands in both, day (OR = 0.29; 95% CI = 0.23–0.37) and night (OR = 0.29; 95% CI = 0.18–0.47) shifts. Monitoring and lowering workload demands while observing rationing of care is necessary to improve nurses’ shift-work satisfaction