The relationship between intra-organizational factors of burn centers and nurses' job characteristics: Testing a middle range grounded theory

Background: job stress is associated with many factors and different hypotheses have been proposed respectively. However, empirical evidence is needed to support these assumptions to guide nursing practice. Aim: To test the hypothesis derived from a related grounded theory study in order to determine the relationship between frequency and intensity of nurses' confrontation with intra-organizational factors of burn centers and their job characteristics. Method: It was a cross-sectional and correlational study. Nurses working in Shahid Mottahari Burn Center (N=98) were recruited by census during 2010. Data were collected by intra-organizational questionnaire and job characteristics form, derived from the previous grounded theory study of the researcher and analyzed with SPSS-PC version 14 using Pearson correlation, ANOVA, Spearman, and Stepwise Regression tests. Auxiliary tests such as Tukey and Scheffe were used for some significant relationships. Results: The majority of sample (%56.1) was nurses and worked in wards (%69.4). Most of them (%51) were working in either evening or night shifts and the duration of their contact with patients (%63.3) was too long. ANOVA test identified that just job category was related to the frequency (F= 7.61, P= 0.001) and intensity (F= 7.35, P= 0.001) of nurses' confrontation with intra-organizational factors. Finally, Scheffe test revealed that the difference was only significant for nurse assistants. Conclusion: The frequency and intensity of confronting with intra-organizational factors was only related to the job category, though other job characteristics made some changes in this variable, but they had no significant role. Accordingly the researcher's previous conceptualizations were modified.