Investigating factors associated with operating room nurses’ professional transition in Singapore health system

The nursing workforce in Singapore has been highly depended on foreign nurses to fill its nursing shortfalls. The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has further exacerbated issues of global nursing shortage onto the Singapore nursing workforce. This was reflected by the recent 1,500 healthcare workers, which included nurses, that have left the workforce entirely in the first half of 2021 due to the physical toll such pandemics had on the healthcare workforce. Within the operating room units, similar insights behind the nursing shortfall globally have been discussed in the extant literature. This issues however, lacked exploration in Singapore nursing context. The quintessential question was to understand the associating factors of nursing induction programmes on new nurses transitioning into their operating room unit.

The objective of this study was to investigate factors associated with nursing professional transition in the operating room units in Singapore health system.

The research used a cohort study design with a descriptive self-administered quantitative survey administered to obtain data. The researcher developed the self-administered quantitative survey titled the ‘Impacts on Operating Room Nurses with Transitional Support Programmes’ survey.

At the time of the study, 91 of 96 responses received met the inclusion criteria. Respondents came from across majority of operating room units in Singapore. 75.3% (n = 75) of respondents had worked in their operating room unit for less than two years.13 questions from the self-developed survey were used to identify relationships that existed between variables that affected operating room nurses in Singapore because of the IP they received. The Spearman correlation test reflected 3 majors factors associated with nursing induction programmes on new nurses transitioning in the operating room units. These include lack of adaptation time, facilitators guidance and topic and skills insufficiency leading towards challenges reaching competence.

The findings of this quantitative study called for the review of the contents outlined in existing operating room nursing induction programmes in Singapore. While the survey respondents mainly acknowledged that they were satisfied with their orientation programmes, responses in the survey outlined those nurses’ faced challenges with knowledge and skills acquired during their induction programme that affected their initial transition to practice in the operating room.