Nurses’ happiness and awareness of their influence on work in governmental and private hospitals

Nurses passed through many stressful experiences during nursing work. Emotional support and considering their emotional needs can alleviate such work-associated tension and contribute to the quality of their performance. Nurses’ happiness and awareness of their influence on work are necessary blocks to build the nurses’ emotional steadiness, and thus their work retention and turnover rates would be maintained. This study establishes to attain two aims: First: to identify the levels of nurses’ happiness and the awareness of their influence on work, in governmental and private hospitals, in Jeddah, Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA). Second: to determine the correlation between those perceived variables. Thus, a descriptive, correlative and comparative research design was employed with 300 registered nurses in King Abd El Aziz governmental hospital and 200 registered nurses in private International Medical Center, Jeddah, KSA. A survey method was applied for data collection, and the study questionnaire involved three parts. Part one is about nurses’ personal profile. The second part included happiness subscale, which was developed by Warr et al., in 1979 and the third one is the individual influence on the work scale that was developed by Toode et al., in 2015. The study findings reveal that the majority of both study groups reported a fair level of happiness, with a moderate awareness level of their influence on work. Additionally, nurses who are working in private hospital have a higher awareness level of their influence on work and happiness, more than the nurses who are working in the governmental hospital. Study subjects who experience a high level of happiness have a high level of awareness of their influence on the work. Therefore, the correlation coefficient among both research variables in both hospitals indicated a noteworthy stronger positive correlation. Conclusion and recommendations: nurse’s happiness and awareness of their influence on work are essential emotional aspects to be considered in nursing management. Fitting plan for nurses’ psychological stability at work should be designed and implemented, particularly in governmental hospitals in Jeddah. Also, Nurse Manager should assess and maintain a high nurses’ happiness level and awareness of their influence on the work; consequently, nurses work product will be improved. Further studies are needed to investigate the study variables by different measurement tools for behaviors or skills. A study about an assessment of the relation between the nurse’s emotional status and their performance is suggested.