Level of Professional Commitment and Associated Factors among Nurses Working In Jimma Zone Public Hospitals; Jimma South West Ethiopia, 2018

Background: Nursing profession is a highly stressful profession and nurses are susceptible to the development of burnout; mainly because of the nature and the emotional demands of their profession. Commitment to one’s profession has not been studied as extensively as organizational commitment and it has been comparatively neglected. Effective human resources are the major factor of continuity, success, and realization of the goals of health care organizations. However, the extent of level of professional commitment and associated factors among nurses is not well known in Ethiopia in general; particularly in Jimma zone. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess level of professional commitment and associated factors among nurses working at Hospitals in Jimma zone. Objective: The main aim of this study was to assess level of professional commitment and associated factors among nurses working in Jimma Zone public Hospitals from March 10-April 10, 2014. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted on 317 nurses. Structured self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. Data was entered and cleaned by using Epi-data version 3.1 and then it was exported to IBM SPSS version 20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics, Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and linear regression were done to describe, to see mean difference and association of study variables. P-value of less than 0.05 was taken to declare statistical significance. Result: This study showed, 115 (36.3%) of nurses have low level of professional commitment, 88 (27.8%) have moderate level of commitment and only one third 114 (36%) of them have high level of commitment to their profession. Position, organizational commitment and, job satisfaction were identified as factors associated with level of professional commitment among the study participants. Conclusion: Only one third of nurses have better level of professional commitment. So, improving this level of commitment needs collaborative intervention on related factors which is a big homework for managers, nursing service managers of Jimma zone public Hospitals. Keywords: Commitment; Professional commitment; Jimma Zone