Professional satisfaction in nursing during the COVID-19 pandemic

OBJECTIVE: to assess the job satisfaction of nursing professionals who worked in care and management during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: cross-sectional epidemiological study, with the participation of 334 nursing professionals of a teaching hospital. Absolute and relative frequencies of qualitative variables and means of numerical variables were calculated. The mean scores of the domains of the Job Satisfaction Survey were compared with sociodemographic-labor variables. Student’s t-test, Mann-Whitney test, and ANOVA test were applied and followed by Tukey, Kruskal-Wallis, or Dunn’s post-test to verify the statistical significance of the results with a critical level of 0.05. RESULTS: 90 professionals were satisfied with their work, three professionals were dissatisfied and 241 professionals were ambivalent. CONCLUSION: ambivalence was evidenced among nursing workers regarding their job satisfaction during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate a path for managers and health policymakers to invest in career plans and work environments that improve the working conditions of nursing workers.