A Study on role overload, work family conflict, role ambiguity and turnover intentions with reference to nurses of a multi-speciality hospital in Trichy

Abstract

Working in hospitals entails long working hours, which affects the work life quality of
women employees. While there is standardisation of work and protocols for clinical staff in
hospitals, nurses have no such standard operating procedures and therefore experience role
ambiguity. The lack of role clarity coupled with the pressure to complete the tasks in time worsens
their problem. The professional responsibilities along with responsibilities at home can be daunting
for such non-clinical women employees and such employees for want of validation of their work and
unable to cope with deadlines are pushed to the brink of quitting their jobs. The present study seeks
to validate the scales measuring role workload, work family conflict, role ambiguity and stated
turnover intentions and examine construct validity and convergent validity of the scales measuring
the specified four constructs. One of the tools, bivariate correlation analysis which finds out the
correlation coefficients between the variables is employed. The reliability of the scales used to
measure the four constructs is determined. Regression analysis to measure the combined effects of
role workload, work family conflict, role ambiguity on the stated turnover intentions of the
employees is carried out. The results provide insights to HR practitioners and organizations in
highlighting the importance of role clarity, lessening the work load of nurses, balancing the
professional and personal lives of nurses such that work-family conflict can be mitigated, if not
avoided.