Evaluation of job security among operating room nurses of teaching hospitals, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences

Background: This study assessed job security among operating room nurses of teaching hospitals, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in Kermanshah, Iran. Methods: The population of this descriptive-analytical study included all operating room nurses (n=217) of teaching hospitals affiliated to Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2017, from whom 136 were chosen as study sample by simple random sampling and Kerjesi-Morgan table. Data were collected by Nissi’s job security questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed by Pearson’schi-square and one-way ANOVA tests. Results: The findings showed the job security of the majority of nursing staff was average in low job displacement (66.9%), job satisfaction (68.5%), emotional work environment (65.5%), sense of peace (71%), organizational commitment (44.4%) and organizational defense (55.6%) domains. However, their job security was high in concentration on job (89.5%) and choosing an appropriate job (90.3%) dimensions and poor in financial satisfaction (71.8%) domain. In general, 89.5% of nurses had a high job security. The results of Pearson’s chi-square test showed a significant association between job security and gender, age, education and income variables. However, the findings of one-way ANOVA indicated no significant difference among different hospitals regarding the mean job security. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrated 89.5% of the studied participants were reported to have job security. Also, among the studied hospitals, Mohammad Kermanshahi hospital was found to have the highest job security.

Accordingly, job security is having the right to continue the job, which is usually continued until retirement to the extent that the staff feel secure they will not lose their job. On the other hand, job security is defined as having an appropriate job and confidence in its continuity in the futureas well as lack of factors threatening the proper working conditions of the given job.
Subjects like job changes, job loss and unavailability of a proper job have been included in job security, making the people uncertain about their job stability and expecting authorities to lay them off any moment because of unjustifiable reasons. On the other hand, job security is conceived of conditions in which an individual is not at the risk of losing or changing the job. Job security is achieved by ensured continuity of relationship between employment and organization. When taking about job security, the issue of official job and guaranteed salary and benefits are evoked in the mind. However, in the current world job security is not dependent upon official job and lifelong employment, while staff empowerment is the basis of job security.
In the new concept of job security, organizations have to depend on the personnel so that they can meet the professional and social expectations of organization and enjoy job stability consequently. From the perspective of managers, job security is considered one of the main incentives of any person who wants to have a job. Job security to develop human resource in every organization is necessary for achieving the organizational objectives. The job security of the staff ensured by the senior manager of organization can lead to development of confidence in organization and consequently reduced intension to quit the job because job security is anessential criterionfor the staff to remain committed and continue their job in organization. Therefore, providing job security is beneficial for both the staff and organization. The tension caused by lack of job security is a factor affecting the tendency of staff to quit their job. Lack of job security include instances like uncertainty about continuity of the job, lack of confidence in provision of retirement, insecurity about temporary employment and failure to feel secure due to plotting against an employed or a dismissed person.
Lack of job security is an internal organizational factor that leads to job burnout and is followed by reduced efficiency of manpower. Operating room nursing has been one of the key jobs in healthcare environments, providing the patients with quality services. The operating room staff, unlike other nursing staff, are exposed to many problems and risks in their career. In the past years of the trade union demands, no special attention has been given to this walk of life, or they may have been forgotten.
The results of a theoretical research by Nazari et al. showed a significant relationship between job security and organizational commitment of physical education teachers.
There was also a significant association between organizational commitment and job security components (concentration on job, job satisfaction, financial satisfaction, organizational reliance and organizational defense), but no significant relationship was observed among job displacement, choosing an appropriate job, emotional work environment and sense of peace. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, the results of regression analysis indicated satisfaction with salary and colleagues had a higher effect on organizational commitment; organizational commitment being a factor that reduces organizational negligence by itself.
In a study, Baferani reported a positively significant correlation between organizational commitment and job security components. No significant difference, however, was found between job security and organizational commitment and personnel's marital status and gender. On the other hand, there was a significant difference between job security and organizational commitment and staff's age, education and employment status . In their study, Verdipoor et al. concluded that higher job security was significantly correlated with job satisfaction among the staff. Based on the above-mentioned discussion and scarcity of studies on job security among operating room nurses, this study was conducted to assess job security among the operating room nurses of teaching hospitals of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2017.

Methods
The population of this descriptive-analytical study comprised of all operating room nurses (n = 217) of the teaching hospitals in Kermanshah, Iran. The study sample was calculated to be 136 nurses using Kerjesi-Morgan table, who were selected through cluster random sampling. It should be noted that data were gathered from 95.5% of the samples.
Since this study was designed based on a quantitative paradigm, a questionnaire was used for data collection. The first section of the questionnaire included 6 items which analyzed demographic characteristics, including age, gender, job experience (in years), education, employment, income and workplace. The second section of the questionnaire consisted of 9 job security components, including concentration on job, low job displacement, choosing an appropriate job, job satisfaction, financial satisfaction, emotional work environment, sense of peace, organizational commitment and organizational defense, which were included in 30 articles expressing the views of experts about issues related to job security in organization.
The maximum score for having job security in this scale was 120 and minimum score was

Results
From 124 participants of this study, 88 were female. The results indicated the age range of 20-50 years for the study participants. As for education, 21 of them had associate degree, 98 had bachelor degree and 5 had master degree. With regard to job experience, the minimum work experience was 1year and maximum work experience was 29 years.
The majority of the staff were doing their post-graduation service, while a small number were officially employed.      Table 4, the results of Pearson's chi-square test showed a significant association between job security and age, gender, education and income at 0.5 error level.

Discussion
This study was aimed to evaluate job security among operating room nurses of teaching hospitals affiliated to Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. The findings showed a significant association between job security and staff's age and education. Baferani also reported a significant difference between job security and variables such as age and education. This might be due to higher effect of age and education on the work experience of the personnel and consequently their job security. Accordingly, the results of Alavi et al. showed a significant difference between job security and gender among the staff, which might be because of higher vulnerability of the female than male personnel. On the other hand, women feel more limitations at workplace 14,15 .
Moreover, the results of this study were in line with those of Nazari et al., indicating a significant difference between the job security of women and men. In addition, the findings revealed no significant relationship between job security and work experience 2 .
These findings were in agreement with those of Taghizadeh et al., probably due to the reduced motivation of the staff with more work experience gained over the years. On the other hand, the young personnel have more energy to provide services 2,7 .
Furthermore, the results indicated a significant association between income and job security, confirming the findings of Nikoukar et al. However,the findings showed no significant difference between job security and employment. This might be due to the fact that in the current world job security is not dependent on official and lifelong employment, while empowerment of the staff is the basis of job security. This result is in contrast with those of Alavi and Baferani showing the significant difference between job security and employment 14,15,16 .

Conclusion
The findings of this study showed most of the nurses had high job security. Identification of factors affecting the job security of personnel can help the managers of healthcare centers to train the motivated workforce by providingan appropriate work environment so that they make their greatest effort on patient care and achievement of organizational objectives. Another important findings was related to the job security of the studied hospitals, indicating that Mohammad Kermanshahi hospital had the highest level of job security. It is quite evident that rewards, equipment, relationship with colleagues, etc. can increase the job security.

Ethics approval and consent to participate
In our country, these studies do not have ethical apologies, so there is no need for ethical approval and participant satisfaction. The authors collected data using informed consent from the research sample and voluntarily completed the questionnaires. . This study has no ethical problems.

Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding
The author (s) did not receive any financial support for the research, authoring or publication of this article.