Professional Quality of Life and Fear of COVID-19 Moderated by Perceived Job Market Outlook: Predicting Registered Nurse Turnover Intentions in South Florida during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The nursing shortage and the aging of the nursing workforce is a growing concern for health care institutions. Understanding nurses attitudes toward turnover intentions is a crucial step to develop effective policies and maintain nurse staffing continuity.

This research aims to study the impact of the Professional Quality of Life and Fear of COVID-19 moderated by perceived Job Market Outlook on South Florida registered nurses by predicting turnover intentions.

From March to August, 2021, 202 registered nurses from seven South Florida counties completed the self-reporting Professional Quality of Life, Fear of COVID-19, and perceptions of Job Market Outlook surveys when predicting turnover intentions in a quantitative nonexperimental predictive correlational design research study.

Results showed that in the professional quality of life, burnout significantly predicted (p <.001) registered nurses (n=202) turnover intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction and fear of COVID-19 did not significantly predict registered nurses’ turnover intentions. Hierarchical regression analysis confirmed burnout is significantly more predictive than no model of turnover intentions accounting for more variance at 15.45% (p < .001). Perceived job market outlook did not moderate between the independent variables and the dependent variable turnover intentions.

This research reveals the deleterious impact of burnout in the registered nurses’ professional quality of life and turnover intentions warranting the need for health care institutions and nursing leadership to collaborate on the needs of the nursing workforce on a micro and macro level.