Nursing and midwifery are priority professions for which there are current and future (projected) workforce shortages. This study takes a work—life perspective to examine the key workplace factors that impact on retention and well-being. Two qualitative studies are described. Study 1 explores the meaning of work—life interaction for these professionals, to inform the focus and emphasis of policy and practice initiatives. Study 2 presents an in-depth examination of five key issues: work scheduling, workload, accessing leave, child-care and casual work. It was clear that nursing and midwifery was a significant source of meaning, purpose and satisfaction in workers’ lives. However, the potential for high levels of work—life conflict and negative spillover of stress into non-work-life was very evident. The paper concludes with a summary of recommendations to improve administrative, procedural and cultural aspects of nursing and midwifery work to support and enhance work—life interaction and well-being.
Allen TD, DEL Herst, CS Bruck and M. Sutton.2000. Consequences associated with work-to-family conflict: A review and agenda for future research. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology5: 278-308.
2.
Anderson SE, BS Coffey and RT Byerly.2002. Formal organizational initiatives and informal workplace practices: Links to work-family conflict and job-related outcomes . Journal of Management28: 787-810.
3.
Australian Bureau of Statistics.2009. Australian social trends, March 2009. Cat. no. 4102.0. Canberra: ABS.
4.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.2009. Nursing and midwifery labour force 2007. Canberra: AIHW.
5.
Bambra C., M. Whitehead, A. Sowden, J. Akers and M. Petticrew.2008. A hard day’s night? The effects of compressed working week interventions on the health and work-life balance of shift workers: A systematic review. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health62: 764-77.
6.
Bardoel EA2003. The provision of formal and informal work-family practices: The relative importance of institutional and resource dependent explanations versus managerial explanations. Women in Management Review18: 7-19.
7.
Barnett RC2006. Relationship of the number and distribution of work hours to health and quality-of-life (QOL) outcomes. Research in Occupational Stress and Wellbeing5: 99-138.
8.
Bartram T., T. Joiner and P. Stanton.2004. Factors affecting the job stress and job satisfaction of Australian nurses: Implications for recruitment and retention. Contemporary Nurse17: 293-304.
9.
Barsky A. and S. Kaplan.2007. If you feel bad, it’s unfair: A quantitative synthesis of affect and organizational justice perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology92: 286-95.
10.
Brewer CS, CT Kovner, W Greene and Y Cheng. 2009. Predictors of RNs’ intent to work and work decisions 1 year later in a US national sample. International Journal of Nursing Studies46: 940-56.
11.
Bryson V.2007. Gender and the politics of time: Feminist theory and contemporary debates. London: Policy Press.
12.
Buchan J. and L. Aiken.2008. Solving nursing shortages: A common priority. Journal of Clinical Nursing17: 3262-8.
13.
Burchielli R., T. Bartram and R. Thanacoody.2008. Work-family balance or greedy organizations?Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations63: 108-33.
14.
Burke RJ and ER Greenglass.2001. Hospital restructuring stressors, work-family concerns and psychological well-being among nursing staff. Community, Work and Family4: 49-62.
15.
Byron K.2005. A meta-analytic review of work-family conflict and its antecedents. Journal of Vocational Behavior67: 169-98.
16.
Casper WJ, LT Eby, C. Bordeaux, A. Lockwood and D. Lambert.2007. A review of research methods in IO/OB work-family research . Journal of Applied Psychology92: 28-43.
17.
Chait Barnett R., KC Gareis and RT Brennan.2008. Wives’ shift work schedules and husbands’ and wives’ well-being in dual-earner couples with children: A within-couple analysis. Journal of Family Issues29: 396-422.
18.
Cole ND and GP Latham.1997. Effects of training in procedural justice on perceptions of disciplinary fairness by unionized employees and disciplinary subject matter experts. Journal of Applied Psychology82: 699-705.
19.
Colquitt JA, DE Conlon, MJ Wesson, CO Porter and KY Ng.2001. Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology86: 425-45.
20.
Coser LA1974. Greedy institutions: Patterns of undivided commitment . New York: Free Press.
21.
Eby LT, WJ Casper, A. Lockwood, C. Bordeaux and A. Brinley.2005. Work and family research in IOB/OB: Content analysis and review of the literature (1980-2002). Journal of Vocational Behavior66: 124-97.
22.
Edwards JR and NP Rothbard.2005. Work and family stress and wellbeing: An integrative model of person-environment fit within and between the work and family domains . In Work and life integration. Organizational, individual and cultural perspectives, eds E Kossek and SJ Lambert, 201-32. New York: Routledge.
23.
Etzion D.2003. Annual vacation: Duration of relief from job stressors and burnout. Anxiety, Stress and Coping16: 213-26.
24.
Fereday J. and C. Oster.2010. Managing a work-life balance: The expereince of midwives working in a group practice setting. Midwifery26: 311-18.
25.
Fitzgerald DC2007. Aging, experienced nurses: Their value and needs . Contemporary Nurse24: 237-42.
26.
Forsyth S. and A. Polzer-Debruyne.2007. The organisational pay-offs for perceived work-life balance support. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources45: 113-23.
27.
Fuwa M.2004. Macro-level gender inequality and the division of household labor in 22 countries. American Sociological Review69: 751-67.
28.
Graham EM and CM Duffield.2010. An ageing nursing workforce. Australian Health Review34: 44-8.
29.
Green F.2004. Why has work effort become more intense? Industrial Relations43: 709-41.
30.
Greenberg J.2006. Losing sleep over organizational injustice: Attenuating insomniac reactions to underpayment inequity with supervisory training in interactional justice. Journal of Applied Psychology91: 58-69.
31.
Greenhaus JH and GN Powell.2006. When work and family are alllies: A theory of work- family enrichment. Academy of Management Review31: 72-92.
32.
Grzywacz JG, MR Frone, CS Brewer and CT Kovner.2006. Quantifying work-family conflict among registered nurses . Research in Nursing & Health29: 414-26.
33.
Grzywacz JG and NF Marks.2000. Reconceptualizing the work-family interface: An ecological perspective on the correlates of positive and negative spillover between work and family. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology5: 111-26.
34.
Harris R., J. Bennett, B Davey and F Ross. 2010. Flexible working and the contribution of nurses in mid-life to the workforce: A qualitative study. International Journal of Nursing Studies47: 418-26.
35.
Heponiemi T., A. Kouvonen, T Sinervo and M Elovainio. 2010. Do psychosocial factors moderate the association of fixed-term employment with work interference with family and sleeping problems in registered nurses: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey . International Journal of Nursing Studies47: 1096-104.
36.
Kalliath T. and P. Brough.2008. Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct. Journal of Management and Organization14: 323-27.
37.
Kirschenbaum A. and R. Mano-Negrin.1999. Underlying labor market dimensions of ‘opportunities’: The case of employee turnover. Human Relations52: 1233-255.
38.
Kovner C., C. Brewer, YW Wu, Y. Cheng and M. Suzuki.2006. Factors associated with work satisfaction of registered nurses. Journal of Nursing Scholarship38: 71-9.
39.
Krippendorff K.2004. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology , 2nd edn. London: Sage Publications.
40.
Lewis R., J. Yarker, E. Donaldson-Feilder, P Flaxman and F Munir. 2010. Using a competency-based approach to identify the management behaviours required to manage workplace stress in nursing: A critical incident study. International Journal of Nursing Studies47: 307-13.
41.
Lim J., F Bogossian and K Ahern. 2010. Stress and coping in Australian nurses: A systematic review. International Nursing Review57: 22-31.
42.
Lumley C., P. Stanton and T. Bartram.2004. Casualisation friend or foe?: A case study investigation of twoAustralian hospitals. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations29: 33-48.
43.
Maher JM, J Lindsay and A Bardoel. 2010. Freeing time? The ‘family time economies’ of nurses. Sociology44: 269-87.
44.
Meijman TF and G. Mulder.1998. Psychological aspects of workload. In Handbook of work and organizational psychology, eds PJ Drenth, H Thierry and CJ de Wolff, 5-34. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
45.
Mesmer-Magnus JR and C. Viswesvaran.2006. How family-friendly work environments affect work/family conflict: A meta-analytic examination. Journal of Labour Research26: 555-74.
46.
New Zealand Ministry of Health.2009. Current status of the national regulated nursing workforce. Auckland: Ministry of Health, NZ.
47.
Paterson TRN.2010. Generational considerations in providing critical care education. Critical Care Nursing Quarterly Perspectives on Critical Care Education33: 67-74.
48.
Perrucci R., S. MacDermid, E. King, CY Tang, T. Brimeyer, K. Ramadoss, S. Kiser and J. Swanberg.2007. The significance of shift work: Current status and future directions. Journal of Family and Economic Issues28: 600-17.
49.
Pocock B.2003. The work/life collision: What work is doing to Australians and what to do about it. Sydney: Federation Press.
50.
Price KH, JJ Lavelle, AB Henley, FK Cocchiara and FR Buchanan.2006. Judging the fairness of voice-based participation across multiple and interrelated stages of decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes99: 212-26.
51.
Pryce J., K. Albertsen and K. Nielson.2006. Evaluation of an open-rota system in a Danish psychiatric hospital: A mechanism for improving job satisfaction and work-life balance . Journal of Nursing Management14: 282-88.
52.
Reiter N.2007. Work life balance: What DO you mean? The ethical ideology underpinning appropriate application. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science43: 273-94.
53.
Rosenfeld P.2007. Workplace practices for retaining older hospital nurses: Implications from a study of nurses with eldercare responsibilities . Policy Politics Nursing Practice8: 120-29.
54.
Sandelowski M.2000. Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing and Health23: 334-40.
55.
Schofield DJ2007. Replacing the projected retiring baby boomer nursing cohort 2001-2026. BMC Health Services Research7: 87-93.
56.
Segal L. and T. Bolton.2009. Issues facing the future health care workforce: the importance of demand modelling. Australia and New Zealand Health Policy6: 12. Online open access http://archive.biomedcentral.com/1743-8462/6/12 (accessed 3 May 2010).
57.
Simoens, S., M. Villeneuve and J. Hurst.2005. Tackling nurse shortages in OECD countries. OECD Health Working Papers no. 19. Paris : OECD.
58.
Simon M., BH Müller and HM Hasselhorn. 2009. Leaving the organization or the profession: A multilevel analysis of nurses’ intentions. Journal of Advanced Nursing66: 616-26.
59.
Takase M., K Oba and N Yamashita. 2009. Generational differences in factors influencing job turnover among Japanese nurses: An exploratory comparative design. International Journal of Nursing Studies46: 957-67.
60.
Townsend K. and C. Allan.2005. Flexibility at a cost: Responding to a skilled labour shortage. In Workplace reform in the healthcare industry: The Australian experience, eds E Willis, F Young and P Stanton , 187-206. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
61.
Townsend K., A. Wilkinson, G. Bamber and C. Allan.2009. Human resources management aspects of hospital ward managers’ jobs. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), San Francisco, CA.
62.
Underhill E.2005. Winners or losers? Work/life balance and temporary agency workers. Labour & Industry16: 29-60.
63.
Voydanoff P.2005. Toward a conceptualization of perceived work-family fit and balance: A demands and resources approach. Journal of Marriage and Family67: 822-36.
64.
West S., M. Boughton and M. Byrnes.2009. Juggling multiple temporalities: The shift work story of mid-life nurses. Journal of Nursing Management17: 110-19.
