Job Satisfaction Among Nurses In Saudi Arabia's Private And Public Sector Hospitals: An Essay.

Topic: Job Satisfaction of nurses within private and government hospitals in Saudi Arabia: Comparative study

1. What is current level of job satisfaction of nurses both in private and public hospitals in Saudi Arabia?

2. What are the factors that contributed in the high or low job satisfaction for nurses?

3. What are the best recommendations that can be developed to decision-making based on the study contribute in employees' efficiency and effectiveness to enhance the quality of healthcare service in Saudi Arabia?

Background and Rationale of the Research

Saudi Arabia is one of developing nations in terms of its progress in Health and Medicare. Nurses are a very important part of the Healthcare system in any country. The role of the nurses in a health care system is regarded as its backbone. This research deals with the job satisfaction levels of the nurses in the private and public sector hospitals of Saudi Arabia. The introduction of this research deals with background of the research, importance of the research and the rationale of the research. Only a handful of research work is done on this significant issue of Saudi Arabian healthcare system. The reports of dissatisfaction of the nurses in Saudi Arabia are very common (Azeem & Altalhi, 2015). This is why the researcher conducts an industrious study to understand the problems of the nurses in the hospitals.

The majority of employees related to Saudi Arabian healthcare system are the nurses. However, the major problem in the Saudi Arabian Medicare is the shortage of nurses from the actual requirement (Lamadah & Sayed, 2014). Factors like the decreasing students in the classes and the job dissatisfaction due to work overload impacts on the scenario of the Healthcare system. The developed countries like UK, USA and Canada have a job satisfaction level of 41%, 36% and 33% (AlYami & Watson, 2014). However, in Saudi Arabia the job satisfaction level is perhaps lower than this.  Higher salaries, generous tax exemptions, free accommodation and allowance for long vacations were common norms in Saudi Arabian work culture among the nurses until the Gulf war at 1991. The Gulf war created tremendous insecurity among the nurses of the western countries and as they moved back to Europe and America, Saudi Arabian health care system faced a huge crisis in filling up those vacancies. The impact was both in the private and the public sectors (Al-Asfour & Khan, 2014). As a result of this the pressure of work fell on the limited workforce of Saudi Arabia. Hence, the job satisfaction level of the nurses in Saudi Arabia became quite questionable. The implementation of a new order by the Saudi Arabian Government to localize the workforce in the nursing sector can be helpful in this matter. If there will be an increasing number of recruitment in the nursing sector, it can be instrumental in the increase of the job satisfaction levels.

Ahmed, (2017), reported in the website of Forbes that the Private health care system is registering a healthy growth rate in the last few years. It is also contributing heavily on the making the health care better in Saudi Arabia. There are a lot of restrictions in receiving the facilities from the hospitals of the Ministry of Health. However, it is important to understand the situation of the nurses in the private sector undertakings. Thousands of nurses work in private sector of Saudi Arabia. A majority of the nurses are of young age. The job satisfaction level of Saudi Arabia is a very important topic to understand and analyse the Healthcare sector of Saudi Arabia.  

Importance of the Research

Job satisfaction is an emotional state of an employee about what he or she feels about their work. It showcases the understanding of their work experience (Azeem & Akhtar, 2014). It is actually a perception of an individual about the experience of his or her work life (Alsaqri, 2014). The job satisfaction of the nurse will be based on various factors and workload is one of them. As there is a major shortfall of workforce, most of the nurses had to work overtime to meet the shortcomings because of the vacant posts. Along with all these there have been reports which suggest that the Healthcare workers have faced several cases of bullying and hostile behaviour in their workplaces. The study of Massey University suggests that such incompetent behaviour is a result of hierarchy, power and discrimination in the hospitals. These cases often affect the nurses psychologically and present a bad picture of the Healthcare scenario of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  The students, who want to take up the career in nursing often, back out for these existing risks in the workplaces (Al-Mazrou et al., 2017). This is the reason, why a scarcity of nurses has become a prevalent problem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The scarcity of nurses played an important role in the job satisfaction levels of the nurses who are working in public as well as private sectors hospitals of Saudi Arabia.

The majority of the Healthcare system of Saudi Arabia is dependent on the active nurses in the country. The nurses compose a major section of the workforce in the Healthcare (Al-Homayan et al., 2013). It is important to understand their comfort in the job they are performing. The performance of the Healthcare sector plays a very important role in the overall progress of the healthcare of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (AlYami, & Watson, 2014). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the countries in the world which has a high growth rate in terms of population. The Government of Saudi Arabia has been running a process to implement various methods for the betterment of the Healthcare system of the country (Alghamdi & Urden, 2016). The nursing sector is also one of the major parts of this huge project taken up by the Government of Saudi Arabia. Hence, the importance of the research lies in the fact that this research can be instrumental in understanding the future Saudi Arabian Health care system.

Shortage Crisis of Nurses in Saudi Arabian Healthcare System

The primary reason behind this research is to seek the present working condition of the nurses in the Healthcare system of Saudi Arabia. According to various reports, the job satisfaction among the nurses is quite low in both the private and public sectors (Hall, 2014). The study will also analyse and differentiate between the job satisfactions levels in private and public hospitals. The aspects like Pay, promotion, Fringe Benefits, Supervision, Contingent awards, age and others are utilised in the research in order to understand the real situation in the nursing sector. These aspects are used as tools to highlight the job satisfaction levels of the nurses both in public as well as private sector hospitals. The research also demands recommendations for the betterment of the job satisfactory levels of the nurses in the private and the public sector hospitals. The recommendations will also play a very important role in the betterment of the entire Healthcare system of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The research is conducted by the researcher on the basis of the structure in which the Healthcare system of Saudi Arabia is run.

This dissertation will focus on the major issues of this upcoming crisis of the Middle East nation. It is true that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has focussed in building a health care business by elevating the services but the job satisfaction has not been properly addressed. The aim of this research will be to find out the level of satisfaction among the nursing workforce working in the private and the public sector hospitals in the country. The research will also focus on the reasons behind the satisfaction levels of the nurses in the private and the public sector hospitals. The research will also recommend ideas which will be acquired from authentic sources to uplift the medical system of the Middle East kingdom. The recommendations will be on the how the job satisfaction levels of the nurses can be increased for the betterment of the healthcare sector of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This dissertation is divided into six chapters and each chapter is systematically arranged for getting high quality research outcome. The structure of the dissertation is arranged in the following manner:

Chapter 1: Introduction: This chapter will provide brief background over the job satisfaction level of the nurses both in private and public hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The chapter will also explain the importance of the research topic. In this chapter, the research aims and questions will also be discussed for collecting authentic information about the research topic. Effectiveness of research aims and questions will definitely extract authentic research outcome. Apart from that, the chapter will also discuss research rationale for understanding the worth of conducting the research on this particular research topic.

Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction Levels of Nurses in Saudi Arabia

Chapter 2: Literature Review: The literature review section will be associated with previous literature regarding the job satisfaction level regarding the nurses in health care industry. This chapter will also provide some useful concepts regarding the variables associated with the research topic. Apart from that, the chapter will also incorporate some relevant theories and model related to job satisfaction of employees. Such theories and models will collect most useful and relevant information regarding the topic of the research.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology: The research methodology chapter will select appropriate research methods or tools for collecting accurate information regarding the job satisfaction level of the nurses both in private and public hospitals of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, this chapter will choose appropriate research philosophy, research approach, research purpose, data collection method and research instruments. This chapter will also select proper sample size and sampling technique for effectively collecting information regarding the research topic. Moreover, the chapter will also choose proper data analysis method for extracting accurate research result from the data collected from the respondents.

Chapter 4: Findings: The findings chapter of the dissertation will be associated with representation of research result and the data collected from the selected respondents. Moreover, the collected information from the selected respondents will be represented in the form of various tables, charts and graphs. The representation of the table and charts will assists in the discussion of the collected data in the nest chapter.

Chapter 5: Discussion: The discussion section will be associated with discussion and analysis of data collected from respondents and literature review. This chapter will also use SPSS data analysis method for analyzing the data and results collected from the selected respondents and other secondary sources. Effectiveness of discussion and data analysis will extract accurate research outcome.

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Recommendation: This chapter will provide brief analysis of the overall dissertation. Furthermore, based on the research result, this chapter will also provide accurate recommendation for minimizing the issues residing the research. 

There has been a lot of research work on the working condition of the nurses in Europe and North America. It is unfortunate that due to our academic snobbery we often overlook developing countries and the situation of the workers there. The reason of conducting this study is that this research not only addresses an important issue but also sets an example towards a different direction. Saudi Arabia is a developing economy. Every developing economy requires a strong Healthcare system for the development of the overall economy (Alshahrani & Alsadiq, 2014). The nurses are an important part of the Healthcare. The nurses are an important part of the healthcare system Therefore, it is important to understand the job satisfaction level of the nurses to develop strategies to help the nursing sector in private and public hospitals of Saudi Arabia. Hence, the conduction of this study is to understand and analyse the problems of the nurses in Saudi Arabia and to offer possible solutions for it.

References

Ahmed, M. (2017). Saudi Arabia Looks To The Private Sector To Meet Growing Healthcare Demands - Forbes Middle East. Forbes Middle East. Retrieved 10 August 2017, from https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/en/saudi-arabia-looks-to-the-private-sector-to-meet-growing-healthcare-demands/

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Al-Homayan, A. M., Shamsudin, F. M., Subramaniam, C., & Islam, R. (2013). Analysis of health care system-resources and nursing sector in Saudi Arabia. Advances in Environmental Biology, 7(9), 2584-2592.

Al-Mazrou, Y., Al-Ghaith, T., Yazbeck, A. S., & Rabie, T. S. (2017). How Labor Laws Can Transform Health Systems: The Case of Saudi Arabia. Health Systems & Reform, 3(1), 26-33.

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