Beyond age: Cognitive performance, health, job satisfaction, and work productivity profiles associated with nurses'...

To identify factors associated with nurses' cognitive performance and examine retirement intentions across cognitive-health-productivity-job satisfaction profiles among early- and late-career nurses.

This cross-sectional study included 397 nurses from two public hospitals in a Turkish province, categorized into early-career (25-35 years) and late-career (≥45 years) cohorts between June and August 2025. Data were collected using a Demographic and Retirement Intention Questionnaire, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the Endicott Work Productivity Scale, and health- and job-related measures. Hierarchical regression and latent profile analysis were performed.

The mean age was 38.02 ± 8.78 years; 81.9% of participants were women and 86.1% had a bachelor's degree or higher. After adjustment, poorer cognitive performance was associated with older age cohort (β = -0.077), greater health-related disability burden (β = -0.014), longer working duration (β = -0.077), and shift work (β = -0.637), whereas smoking (β = 0.644) was positively associated with cognitive performance. Latent profile analysis identified three distinct cognitive-health-work profiles. Overall, 55.7% of nurses intended to retire as soon as they became eligible. Older nurses were more likely to belong to the High Performance-Unsatisfied profile. Across profiles, early retirement was primarily associated with high work stress, low job satisfaction, insufficient salary, demanding working hours, and night or shift work, while health and family-related reasons were more common in the higher-retirement-intention profiles.

Retirement intentions differed across cognitive-health-work profiles, highlighting the need for multidimensional retention strategies that address functional capacity, job satisfaction, work productivity, and healthy work environments across career stages.