Motivation factors of nurses in Primary Health Care

Abstract

Introduction: Nurses’ motivation is fundamental for increase productivity, efficiency and quality of nursing care and that is why it is so important for nursing management. Objectives: To understand the motivational factors of nurses in a group of health centres in the Lisbon region. Methodology: Qualitative, exploratory-descriptive case study. Data collection was based on a semi-structured interview, conducted with nine nurses from a Group of Health Centres in the Lisbon region. To ensure a greater variety and richness of data, nurses were selected from different types of functional units. The number of participants was determined following the response saturation criterion. The recorded interviews were transcribed in full, and analysed through content analysis. Results: The results of the study indicate that the main motivating factors for nurses are: rewards, career development, recognition, workplace / work environment, performance-based financing, leadership and professional achievement, being that career development was the factor to which the participants attributed greater importance and performance-based financing the factor to which the majority of the participants attributed less importance as a motivational factor. Conclusion: The motivational factors of the participants are in line with what is described in the literature for other contexts. It was found that the meaning and importance attributed to the different factors varies from participant to participant, which highlights the individuality of each one, motivated by their own needs.
Further studies on the motivation of nurses should be carried out, namely in Primary Health Care (PHC), where there is a shortage of scientific content.