Job Satisfaction Among Family Nurse Practitioners in the United States Air Force

Increasing numbers of Family Nurse Practitioners FNPs are being utilized within the Air Force. Nurse Practitioners provide patient education, acute care, and prevention services at lower cost due to the lower cost of training and lower salaries than physicians, without jeopardizing care. Creating an optimal working relationship, can help the new FNP integrate into their new role successfully. The purpose of this descriptive study is to describe and assess the factors affecting job satisfaction among FNPs in the Air Force. The conceptual framework to guide this study is based on Frederick Herzbergs theory of job satisfaction. Identifying the factors affecting job satisfaction, can help team members, supervisors and the new FNPs smoothly transition to the provider role. The entire population of 32 Air Force FNPs were surveyed using the Measurement of Job Satisfaction tool developed by Traynor and Wade. The 44 item tool contains questions related to seven categories personal, workload, training, standards of care, pay, prospects, and professional support satisfaction. A 5 point Likert scale was used to measure the FNPs responses to each of these categories. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic data of the subjects regarding age, education, rank, education, clinical setting and years of practice. Study results show that overall Air Force FNPs express a high level of satisfaction. As earlier literature demonstrates, intrinsic factors such as personal satisfaction and quality patient care positively influence job satisfaction. Also salary was found to be the highest dissatisfier. Study results may be helpful to supervisors and FNPs as the role of Nurse Practitioners expand in the Air Force.