This study was designed to investigate the opinions of District 4 membership of the Texas Nurses Association concerning mandatory and voluntary continuing education and to see if there was a relationship between members views and specific demographic characteristics. With the enormous growth of scientific knowledge, health professionals are becoming increasingly aware of the need to require their practitioners to show proof of competence to practice and to keep their knowledge and skills up to date. Many states have proposed legislation to require nurses to participate in continuing education to maintain current registration of the license to practice. Even though the majority of nurses in the United States would attest to the value of continuing education, the subject is fraught with controversy as to whether the programs should be voluntary or mandatory. The reasons most commonly indicated for support of mandatory education were these: (1) Mandatory continuing education requirements would upgrade nurses and the nursing profession; and (2) Many nurses are not self-motivated and need encouragement from the outside before they will participate in the continuing education which they need to keep current.

This study purposed to determine Registered Nurses' levels of knowledge and support of the Professional Nursing Practice Act considered by the Sixty-fifth Texas Legislature. According to the findings previously described, it may be concluded that many Registered Nurses participate infrequently in continuing nursing education programs. If the proposed Act had been passed during this session of the Texas Legislature, most Registered Nurses licensed in Texas would have been required to change their levels of participation when regulations regarding continuing education were implemented, no later than January 1, 1982. It may be further concluded that Registered Nurses lacked sufficient knowledge about the Act that was proposed in 1977. Both comments made by respondents and answers to specific questions in the questionnaire pointed to this conclusion.

This cross-sectional survey examined the relationship between social interest, as postulated by Alfred Adler, and job satisfaction among full-time employed registered nurses to determine whether social interest was related to work attitude and whether job satisfaction was related to age, level of education, experience, and type of position in nursing.

Hospitals are experiencing a critical shortage of qualified registered nurses. While traditional research explored reasons why nurses choose to leave their jobs, this study examined why nurses may choose to stay. Inter-relationships among cognitive, affective, and demographic variables and their impact on hospital nurses’ affective commitment to their current jobs were assessed. Participants included 134 full-time registered nurses in Dallas, Texas. They were asked about their tenure and educational degree, and completed the following measures online: Nurses’ Affective Commitment to Their Current Jobs; Nursing Stress Scale; Work Climate Questionnaire; and Coping Response Inventory. The results supported previous findings that nurses’ affective commitment to their current jobs was positively related to perceived autonomy support, percentage of reported coping approach strategies, and number of years worked in their current hospital unit. Furthermore, nurses’ affective commitment was negatively related to the two stress-related variables: number of chronic stressors (NCS) and intensity of stressors. In the primary analysis of the proposed Model of Nurses’ Affective Commitment to Their Current Jobs, a significant three-way interaction was found among perceived autonomy support and percentage of reported coping approach strategies (RCAS) on the relationship between NCS, and nurses’ affective commitment. A post hoc analysis found that nurses with a low level of RCAS had a significant change in the relationship between NCS and nurses’ affective commitment, depending on their level of perceived autonomy support. There was a negative relationship between NCS and nurses’ affective commitment for nurses’ with low levels of perceived autonomy support; whereas, there was a positive relationship between NCS and nurses’ affective commitment for nurses’ with high levels of perceived autonomy support. In addition, a secondary analysis on the model revealed that, for nurses working in their units less than six years, there was a varying degree of a positive relationship between RCAS and nurses’ affective commitment to their current jobs depending on the level of perceived autonomy support. However for nurses working more than six years, there was a negative relationship between RCAS and nurses’ affective commitment to their current jobs for nurses with low levels of perceived autonomy support. / text