Introduction

In the industrial psychology research area, commitment to work has been argued to be a common construct of the psychological attitude to work. Working people have always been likely to commit to their organization. However, as an occupation is a significant aspect of people's lives, commitment to an occupation has recently been attracting a great deal of interest. This trend is no exception in nursing. Occupational commitment is defined as "a psychological link between a person and his or her occupation that is based on an affective reaction to that occupation" [1], or "a commitment to professional objectives, values, beliefs, and willingness to continue in one's profession" [2]. Occupational commitment is related to job attitude or work-related behavior. In particular, occupational commitment is proposed to be a strong predictor of professional turnover intention and motivation for entering a profession [3,4]. When nurse managers discuss nurse turnover or consider an efficient way to recruit and retain nurses, occupational commitment could be the key to success.

Keyword: Nursing, Occupational commitment, Professional turnover, Intention to stay

Ensuring adequate nursing personnel is a global concern. In the US and European countries, 5% to 49% of nurses have thought aboutleaving the profession [5]. A survey by the Japanese Nursing Association [6] reported that 58.1% of nurses wanted to continue working as a nurse. However, the survey found that 32.0% showed a lower attachment to the nursing profession [6]. Decreasing commitment to nursing and an increase in the professional turnover rate among nurses has had serious effects on the healthcare system. An insufficient nursing workforce and nursing shortage could lead to a decrease in the quality and safety of patient care [5-7].

Healthcare settings make an effort to prevent nurse turnover from their organization and to secure nursing personnel within their organizations. These attempts are highly important from the stand point of the organization’s human resources management. However, professional turnover should be considered a more critical issue than organizational turnover. As shown in the survey reports by various countries and Japan that were previously mentioned [5-7], there is an increasing number of inactive nurses,and we now face the serious fact that the total number of nurses is decreasing steadily internationally. Nursing professional turnover leads to a loss of tacit knowledge, xpert skills, and extensive nursing experience, and it is costly to the healthcare system. Thus, the healthcare system could suffer fatal damage. Most of the measures that prevent nurse turnover aim at promoting organizational socialization for new nurses or enhancing the organizational structural and cultural support for juggling work and their personal life. These measures are completely to the organization's advantage. Policies that intend to provide support for those in the nursing profession are needed by whole healthcare systems.

As mentioned above, many research studies have demonstrated that occupational commitment is a significant factor affecting the intention to leave or to continue in the nursing profession. Although these studies stressed the importance of developing occupational commitment for motivating the intention to stay in nursing [8], few studies have been conducted into the strategies or interventions that improve occupational commitment among nurses.

Resilience, self-esteem, and psychological capital (defined as &quto;a positive state of mind exhibited during the growth and development of an individual&quto; [9]), which are personal internal resources, have also gained attentionas key factors in overcoming the adverse effects of job stress and reducing turnover intention [10-11]. Exercises and strategies for nurses to develop and maintain their personal resilience, self-efficacy, and psychological capital are implemented in the workplace. In the same manner, it is an urgent issue that intervention programs are constructed to develop occupational commitment. With this view in mind, surveys need to be conducted to clarify the determinants of occupational commitment.

Disclosure

The author meets the ICMJE criteria for authorship credit (www.icmje.org/ethi-cal_1author.html), as follows: (1) substantial contributions to the conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.

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