Nurses’ Rest Breaks and Organizational Leaving Intentions

Improving nurses' staff retention is highly needed since risks of turnover are high in this profession. Prior research uncovered job demands as important driver and job resources as protective factor for the development of nurses' organizational leaving intentions. However, research on beneficial effects of rest break design as an important job resource on nurses' leaving intentions is sparse and their interactions with present job demands have been widely neglected. Therefore, we aimed to examine if different rest break characteristics (i.e. break length, break disturbances, and social breaks) predict nurses' organizational leaving intentions while also considering job demands (i.e. quantitative, cognitive, and emotional demands, and social conflicts) and other well-known person-related and work-related turnover antecedents. We conducted a cross-sectional paper-pencil survey study with 167 nurses from Germany. We found a positive relation between rest break disturbances and organizational leaving intentions even after adjusting for person-related and work-related confounders. Rest break length and the frequency of social breaks were no significant predictors when considering all rest break characteristics in combination. Moreover, high quantitative demands and high social conflicts at work related to higher leaving intentions. Fewer rest break disturbances increased the negative relation between cognitive demands and leaving intentions. In order to reduce nurses' organizational leaving intentions and to improve staff retention, nursing management should prevent disturbances of nurses' rest breaks in addition to other work design interventions such as reducing quantitative demands and social conflicts and especially when implementing cognitive challenging tasks.