The Effects of a Toxic Work Environment for Registered Nurses

Abstract

This study investigated the environment of registered nurses in hopes of gaining an understanding of turnover intentions. Registered nurses from Eastern Kansas were surveyed to gain perspective on perceptions of workplace bullying, abusive supervision, and workplace autonomy in an attempt to understand what may be contributing to turnover. Variables were selected and explored with the oppression theory framework. The goal is to create solutions that will help retain talent in the Nursing field. There were 33 registered nurses who participated in this study. Nurses were surveyed on peer to peer hostility, physician support, abusive supervision, job characteristics, turnover intentions, and burnout. The results indicate that abusive supervision had the strongest relationship with the turn over intentions (b = .67, p <.001). Generalization of the results should be cautioned as the sample size was low and convenience sampling was used.