Last update:
22-Apr-2024

OBJECTIVE Tο investigate the phenomenon of "overqualification" in the nursing personnel of a public general hospital, in relation to the existence of "professional boredom".

METHOD A cross-sectional study was conducted in January– February 2022, on 146 nursing personnel, at the Public General Hospital of Crete. Scale of Perceived Overqualification and Scale of Work-related Boredom were employed to collect the data. Α convenience sampling method was applied. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 26.0, was used for the statistical analysis.

RESULTS The rate of "overqualification" responses among nursing personnel was found to be low (20.5%) (p<0.05), as was the rate of "professional boredom" (8.2%) (p<0.05). A statistically significant association was found between "overqualification" and "professional boredom", with participants with boredom reporting a higher frequency of overqualification than those without boredom (83.3% versus 14.9%, p<0.001). Additionally, it was observed that the higher qualification surplus score is associated with the participants' higher levels of education (p=0.002) (objective qualification surplus), i.e. those with a master's/doctorate degree, versus those with a basic degree or school or two-year nursing assistant degree (47.4% versus 17.0% and 15.2%, respectively, p=0.017).

CONCLUSIONS The present study identified two phenomena, overqualification and work boredom, that have a direct impact on the manifestation of low job satisfaction and poor work performance in the Greek health sector but have received insufficient attention. To investigate the relationship between these two phenomena and other parameters is necessary to enhance the leadership's role as a mediator and to conduct new studies on a larger scale.

Key words: Nurses, Nursing personnel, Nursing staff, Overqualification, Work boredom.