Determining and Prioritizing Factors Affecting Career Development in Nurses
Keywords:
Determination and prioritization, influential factors, career development, nursesAbstract
The purpose of this study was to identify and prioritize the factors influencing career development among nurses at Bu-Ali Sina Hospital in Qazvin. This mixed-method research was conducted in two stages. In the qualitative phase, data were collected through interviews with 21 experts, managers, and university professors working in the hospital and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. In the quantitative phase, the extracted indicators were evaluated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) via Expert Choice software to determine the relative importance and ranking of factors. The findings revealed five main categories of factors affecting nurses’ career development: psychological empowerment, talent management and succession planning, performance evaluation system, promotion and appointment system, and job environment. The AHP results indicated that the promotion and appointment system (0.456) had the greatest impact, followed by talent management and succession planning (0.245), performance evaluation system (0.163), job environment (0.078), and psychological empowerment (0.059). At the indicator level, merit-based promotion, retention of skilled staff, self-feedback, and managerial support were identified as the most critical subfactors. Career development plays a pivotal role in enhancing nurses’ professional growth, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Establishing transparent promotion systems, effective performance evaluation mechanisms, and fostering talent management and empowerment can strengthen both individual and organizational outcomes in the healthcare sector.
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