The mediating role of nurse–physician collaboration in the effect of organizational commitment on turnover intention

ABSTRACT

Despite extensive research having been carried out on nurse-physician collaboration, there remains a paucity of evidence on how collaboration interacts with organizational commitment and its effect on turnover intention. This study aims to determine the mediating role of nurse-physician collaboration on the effect of organizational commitment on turnover intention. We used a cross-sectional design based on voluntary paper surveys from the inpatient clinics of six public hospitals in the north of Turkey. Data including measures of nurse-physician collaboration, organizational commitment, and turnover intention were collected from a convenience sample of the nurses (n = 212) and physicians (n = 109). Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between variables, and the mediating effect was analyzed with PROCESS Macro “Model 4” for IBM SPSS. Statistical significance was specified at 95% confidence intervals and two-tailed P values of <0.05 for all tests. While most of the participants were nurses (66%), 34% were physicians. For both nurses and physicians, organizational commitment and nurse-physician collaboration negatively affected the turnover intention. However, the mediating role of nurse-physician collaboration was only significant for nurses (b = −0.025). The results demonstrate the importance of harmony, joint decision-making, and responsibility-sharing between nurses and physicians concerning dedication, engagement, and job satisfaction, especially for nurses.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational commitment
• turnover intention
• nurse
• physician
• nurse–physician collaboration

Acknowledgments

In this study, Karadeniz Technical University Scientific Research Projects Commission provided transportation financing to the researchers. The results of the research were reported to the commission. The authors express their gratitude to the nurses and physicians who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.