The effect of preceptor program on nurses' attitudes concerning their organization and profession and their turnover intention

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a preceptor program prepared based on the organizational socialization model on newcomer nurses' intention to leave their unit, organization or profession, organizational and professional commitment, job satisfaction, and workload perceptions. Method: The research was carried out in two phases. The first phase with a descriptive, cross-sectional design was conducted with 335 nurses in a university hospital between July 2017 and September 2018. The second phase was implemented using a quasi-experimental single group pre-post design with 56 new nurses from October 2018 to December 2020 in the same hospital. The intervention implemented in this study was a preceptor program prepared based on the organizational socialization model in order to improve the institutional and professional attitudes of newcomer nurses. Preceptor program strategies were implemented for nine months. The first measurements were performed between the first and third months before the commencement of the program and the second measurements at the 12th month of the implementation. The data collection tools used were scales on turnover intentions, professional and organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and workload perceptions. Data analyses were performed using descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and paired t-test. Results: In the first phase of the study, job satisfaction and affective commitment to the organization were determined as common predictors of the nurses' intention to leave their unit, organization, and profession. The second phase revealed that the intention of leaving the unit and profession, continuance commitment to the organization, professional normative commitment and job satisfaction levels of the newcomer nurses remained the same after attending the preceptor program for one year. At the end of the program, it was found that the participants' intention to leave their organization increased while their affective and normative commitment to the organization and their professional affective commitment decreased. Conclusion: The results of this study again emphasized the need to enrich preceptor programs with multi-faceted approaches in order to improve the institutional and professional attitudes of newcomer nurses.