Authors (including presenting author) :
WONG WY(1), LEE C(1), LAM CW(1), WONG PS(1), FONG R(1), LIU YWE(1), KWONG MK(1), HUNG YKS(1), LI WC(1)
Affiliation :
(1) CENTRAL NURSING DIVISION, QUEEN ELIZABETH HOSPITAL
Introduction :
In February 2020, a Nurse Career Counseling program (NCCP) was initiated in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, helping the nurses at their age 30 transition to review their past career life, assessing their current situation, and assisting them to plan for their future career. Since, nurse was an important asset of the organization, we believed that providing support, care and concern would be a good way to retain them and build up a quality and sustainable workforce to meet with the future challenges.
Objectives :
Help the staff to review their career history, assess the current employment, and plan future career development. Enhance the staff's understanding of self, his/her career interest. Assist staff to see the future direction and facilitate them to set their future goals, develop their career plan. Advise staff on the necessary preparation for future career advancement.
Methodology :
There were totally 100 nurses at 7 years’ appointment were invited to the second batch of this program. Each nurses were offered a counselling session for one hour. During the counselling session, nurses will be encouraged to review her study history, working experience, job satisfaction and happy score in the current workplace, turnover intent as well as expressing their career interest. Counsellor will guide them to express their stresses in physical, psychological and social components through the Nurse Stress Scale. Finally, counsellor will pave the way for nurses on self-reflection of their career interest follow through the counselling session. After all, an evaluation questionnaire was conducted to review the effectiveness and relevance of the program.
Result & Outcome :
The majority of the nurses were satisfied with the current workplace and having a relatively high Happy Score (mean Happy Score 7.7/10) and Job Satisfaction Score (mean Job Satisfaction Score 7.4/10). The mean Total Stress Score was 22.3/102 which was considered not at a risky level. Physical stress from the workload and psychological stress from the death & dying were more important area to be addressed. The turnover intent was 36%, which it is important to build up the nurse’s sense of belongings to the organization. The statistical finding showed that there was a significant relationship between PRCC and turnover intent. Improve the specialty training opportunity for the nurses was surely one of the incentives to retain the nurses in the organization.
To conclude, the staff counselling service is one of a good initiative on staff engagement. Engage the young generation and make them feel more connected to their jobs and they will go the extra mile to provide great quality care for patients. Recognition on their contribution is a powerful way to provide feedback and improve employee engagement. Formal learning and development programs help staff improve their skillsets and reach their full potential, in turn helps them become more successful and engaged in their work.
