Decent work conditions and Nigerian nurse emigration: The role of burnout and commitment

While migration is a historical and universal phenomenon and has benefits for both receiving and sending countries, emigration of healthcare professionals poses significant challenges for the sending nations. Many sending nations, such as Nigeria, are characterised by insufficient vital expertise and depleted healthcare systems. This creates a vicious spiral of worsening conditions for nurses, increasing the effort to leave. To address these trends, relying on the Conservation of Resources theory, we investigated the decent work-emigration intention relationship coupled with the underlying mechanisms.

Using convenience sampling, we used a self-administered questionnaire to collect responses from 280 registered nurses working in government hospitals in three States in Southwest Nigeria. Data collected was analysed using Structural Equation Modeling-Partial Least Squares to examine the convergent validity and reliability of the studied variables and the Hayes Process Macro to identify the direct effects and the indirect effects of each mediator.

The majority of the nurses reported inadequate decent work conditions (75 %), low affective commitment (89.5 %), a high prevalence of job burnout (70.6 %), and a strong intention to emigrate (89.3 %). Our findings suggest that decent work negatively relates with emigration intention, while job burnout and affective commitment independently and serially mediated this relationship.

The results indicated that nurses with access to decent work conditions are inclined to experience low job burnout and high affective commitment, contributing to reduced emigration intention. Results suggest the need to focus more on interventions essential for resource retention devoted to transforming workplaces into environments of professional fulfilment.