Stemming the tide of leadership instability in long term care: How worklife factors and burnout contribute to nursing home administrators' intention to leave their job and career

The primary purpose of this research study is to explore the relationships among the areas of worklife (Leiter & Maslach, 2004), burnout, and intentions to leave the job and the profession among NHAs. Specifically, the study seeks to determine the extent to which the areas of worklife (workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values) (Leiter & Maslach, 2004) and burnout predict intention to leave (a) current NHA position and (b) the NHA profession, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics of NHAs and organizational characteristics of the skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in which they work.;A cross-sectional survey online survey developed using Qualtrics(TM) of all current Pennsylvania NHAs was administered to explore the relationships among areas of worklife, job burnout, and turnover intentions among nursing home administrators. An invitation to participate in the study was distributed via email from LeadingAgePA (the professional organization for NHAs in nonprofit SNFs), the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (the professional organization for NHAs in private/for-profit SNFs), and the Pennsylvania Association of County Affiliated Homes (the professional organization for state/county operated SNFs). The survey questionnaire included established measures of the Areas of Worklife Survey (Leiter & Maslach, 2000), Maslach's Burnout Inventory--General Survey (MBI-GI) (Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, & Jackson, 1996), and the Anticipated Turnover Scale (Hinshaw & Atwood, 1982), along with questions measuring intentions to leave the NHA profession. The questionnaire also includes items pertaining to NHA sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, age, education, ethnicity, social support, years of experience as an NHA, and organizational characteristics of the SNF (size; occupancy, ownership, chain membership, Medicaid census, deficiency citations, and geographic location). Regression analyses were used to examine the relationships among the independent and dependent variables while controlling for NHA sociodemographic characteristics and the organizational characteristics of the skilled nursing facilities where they work.