The paradox on declining job satisfaction trend with the intention to remain employed in the nursing profession in the Ethiopian nursing workforce. Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: High attrition rates, low job satisfaction and motivation are great concern that pose major challenges for nurses in Ethiopia where it has unfavorable influences on the nursing system and the quality of nursing care. But, different authors reported inconsistent findings about the proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed. In addition; the trends and national pooled estimate of proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed in nursing profession is no assessed. Therefore; the aim of this systemic review and meta-analysis is to show the trends, and estimate the national pooled proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed in nursing profession in Ethiopia. Methods: Major databases; PubMed, Medline and African Journals Online were included in the review. Grey literatures like Web of Science, Google scholar and repository online library in universities in Ethiopian were searched. Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instrument was used for critical appraisal. The meta-analysis was conducted using STATA-11. Descriptive information of studies was presented in narrative form and quantitative results were presented in forest plots. The Cochran Q test and I 2 test statistics were used to survey heterogeneity among studies. The pooled estimate prevalence with 95% confidence intervals were computed. Results: A total seven and five studies were included to estimate job satisfaction and intention to be employed respectively. The proportion of job satisfaction is declining from 2014 (59.6%) to 2019 (48%) while the proportion of intention to remain employed in nursing profession is increasing from 2014 (39%) to 2017 (86.7%). The overall national pooled proportion of job satisfaction among nurses was 54.96 % (95% CI: 48.83%, 61%) while the intention to remain employed in nursing profession was 54.94 % (95% CI: 36.44%, 73.45%). Conclusions: There is declining of job satisfaction and increasing of intention to remain employed trends across publication years. But, the national pooled proportion of job satisfaction and intention to remain employed are low. Interventions aiming to increases the job satisfaction and intention to remain employed is important. Keywords: Job satisfaction, Intention to remain employed, Nurses, Ethiopia.