Influence of job characteristics on job satisfaction of pediatric nurses

This study was conducted to determine the possible influence of job characteristics on job satisfaction of pediatric nurses. Eighty-nine pediatric nurses working in the pediatric units of the Maternity and Children Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia comprised the subject of the present study. A questionnaire of three parts was synthesized for this study. Part I is a multifaceted measure of job satisfaction (Smith et al., 1969) and known as job Descriptive Index. Part II is a job Characteristics Inventory (J.C.I) of 30 items developed by (Sims et al., 1976) to determine nurses perception of six characteristics, namely, variety, autonomy, task identity, feed back, dealing with others, and friendship opportunities. Part III comprised five demographic items. The study revealed that the overall degree of satisfaction of pediatric nurses was found to be relatively low with a mean percentage score of only 58.52%. Regarding the five job satisfaction subscales, nature of work (nursing of children) showed the highest mean percentage score. The study illustrates a positive strong correlation between job characteristics and job satisfaction with variety, task identity, and feedback being the statistically significant individual characteristics.