Critical care nursing places sustained pressure on staff who deliver continuous care to patients requiring close monitoring and life-sustaining treatment. In intensive care settings, work-life quality is closely tied to how nurses experience their roles, working conditions and professional commitment. A 2026 publication in BMC Nursing, based on a descriptive, cross-sectional design, examined this relationship among 136 intensive care nurses in one public and one private hospital in İzmir between March and July 2024. Participants completed face-to-face questionnaires covering demographic and professional characteristics, nursing work-life quality and job satisfaction. The results show a strong, statistically significant positive relationship between work-life quality and job satisfaction, alongside signs of strain in long-term professional motivation.
Work-Life Quality as a Workforce Measure
Critical care units require continuous nursing care for patients whose condition needs close and constant monitoring. Nurses in these settings work with patients receiving fundamental and advanced life-sustaining care, including mechanical ventilation and circulatory assist systems. The work is intense and stressful, with long working hours, heavy workload, conflict with patients and families, conflict with management and salary concerns identified as factors that can affect quality of life at work.
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Work-life quality covers the organisational environment and policies affecting professional and personal well-being. It includes the physical work environment and psychological, emotional and social dimensions of working life. The Nursing Work Life Quality Scale used in the assessment includes five subscales: work environment, relationships with managers, working conditions, job perception and support services.
The participants were active intensive care nurses with at least six months of intensive care experience. Nurses working outside intensive care, those with less than six months of relevant experience, those on leave, administrative nurses not actively providing clinical care and incomplete questionnaires were excluded. The final sample included nurses from general, coronary, level 3, paediatric and neonatal critical care units.
Job Satisfaction Tracks Closely with Work-Life Quality
Job satisfaction was assessed with the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, which measures overall, intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction. Intrinsic items include achievement, recognition and responsibility, while extrinsic items cover work conditions, management and pay. Higher scores indicate greater satisfaction. The average Minnesota score was 63.00, while the average Nursing Work Life Quality Scale score was 108.50.
The relationship between the two measures was strong and statistically significant. The correlation coefficient was 0.717, with p < 0.001, showing that higher work-life quality was associated with higher job satisfaction among the participating intensive care nurses. The scale results therefore connect institutional conditions directly with professional satisfaction in this sample.
Job satisfaction differed significantly by gender and parental status. Participants coded as male had higher Minnesota scores than participants coded as female, while work-life quality scores did not differ significantly by gender. Participants with children also had higher job satisfaction scores than those without children, while their work-life quality scores did not differ significantly. Marital status, educational background, place of employment and type of intensive care unit showed no significant differences in either job satisfaction or work-life quality scores.
Professional Commitment Shows Signs of Strain
The professional attitude results show both commitment and strain. Most nurses stated that they practised their profession with dedication, at 84.6%. A further 76.5% stated that they had chosen the profession voluntarily. However, only 44.9% said they would choose the same profession again if given another chance. This gap indicates a mismatch between professional dedication and willingness to repeat the same career choice.
Low job satisfaction is linked in the material to physical, mental, professional, family, organisational and social problems. These include sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, reduced work performance, disengagement from work, deterioration in family relationships, interpersonal communication problems, work slowdowns, disciplinary issues and burnout syndrome.
The results place emphasis on working conditions, managerial support, autonomy and psychosocial support in intensive care environments. Routine psychosocial support mechanisms and debriefing sessions are identified as measures for intensive care nurses. Greater autonomy in clinical decision-making is also identified as important for preventing loss of motivation. The conclusion further calls for shift arrangements to protect nurses’ health, satisfactory wage policies, career development opportunities and institutional stress management programmes.
Work-life quality and job satisfaction are closely connected among the intensive care nurses assessed in İzmir. The strongest finding is the positive association between better perceived work-life quality and higher job satisfaction. Professional dedication remains high, but the lower willingness to choose the same profession again signals pressure on long-term motivation. The findings support closer attention to working conditions, support systems, decision-making autonomy, shift arrangements, pay policies and career development in critical care nursing.
Source: BMC Nursing
Image Credit: iStock
References:
Olgun Ş, Yanardağ CH, Kılıç Z et al. (2026) The effect of work life quality on job satisfaction in critical care nurses. BMC Nurs: In Press.
