Nurses’ intention to leave their job and associated factors in Bahir Dar, Amhara Region, Ethiopia, 2017

BACKGROUND: Intention to leave is an employee’s plan of tendency to leave the current working institute to find an alternative job in the near future. Even though nurses are the backbone of patient caring, there was no study done on intention to leave their job in North West Ethiopia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess nurses’ intention to leave their job and associated factors in Bahir Dar, North West Ethiopia, 2017. METHODS: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted from 1st March to 30th March 2017. After proportional sample size allocation, 210 participants were selected by simple random sampling method. Data were collected by using a self-administered structured questionnaire. Statistical Package for Social Science version 23.0 was used to enter, clean, code and analyze the collected data. The association between independent and dependent variables was assessed by using bivariable and multivariable logistic regression model. Factors that had statistically significant association with the dependent variable (P < 0.05) were identified as significant in the multivariable logistic regression analysis. RESULT: From a total of 210 nurses, 191 of them were participating in this study making a response rate of 90.95%. From all nurses, 64.4%of them were employed in the hospital. In this study, nurses’ overall intention to leave their job was 64.9% (95% CI: [57.6, 71.2]). Nurses’ intention to leave their job was determined by disagree in recognition (AOR = 4.83; 95%CI: [1.73, 13.50]), and work itself (AOR = 31.30; 95%CI: [7.16, 136.78]). CONCLUSION: Nurses’ intention to leave their job in the current study was high. The contributing factors for this problem were disagree in recognition at work and work itself. Hence, we recommended that hospital and health center managers should maintain recognition at work and work itself to retain nurses.