Work ability as a major determinant of clinical nurses’ quality of life

Aims and objectives. To examine quality of life determinants among clinical nurses in Croatia with an emphasis on their work ability. Background. An important personnel management challenge is to explore factors that stimulate or hinder the development of individual work ability and quality of life throughout a career. Design. A cross‐sectional study. Methods. The study was performed during 2007–2008 in six randomly selected hospitals in Croatia. The self‐administered questionnaires included the Work Ability Index (WAI) developed by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, the Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQL‐BREF) developed by the World Health Organization and additional socio‐demographic questions. A total number of 1212 nurses completed the questionnaires, giving a response rate of 67.3%. Binary logistic regression was performed to assess how socio‐demographic characteristics and work ability groups predict each of the WHOQL‐BREF domains. Results. Having a satisfactory WAI score (WAI ≥ 37) was significantly the most important predictor for all quality of life domains, with the odds ratios (OR) being as follows: OR = 6.8 (95% CI: 4.8–9.6) for the physical domain, OR = 2.3 (95% CI: 1.7–3.1) for the psychological domain, OR = 1.7 (95% CI: 1.3–2.4) for the social relationship domain and OR = 1.7 (95% CI: 1.3–2.3) for the environmental domain. Conclusions. Satisfactory work ability was a major quality of life determinant in all WHOQL‐BREF domains with the highest odds ratio for the physical domain. Maintaining clinical nurses’ work ability is an important issue, because it is foundational for the quality of life of the workforce. Relevance to clinical practice. Our study provides quantified estimates of the extent to which a satisfactory WAI score predicts a better score in physical, psychosocial, social relationships and environmental domain of nurses’ quality of life. Therefore, maintaining or improving nurses’ work ability remains the essential aim of hospital managers.