. Education, motivations and working conditions of a cohort of nurses attending to an open-competition.
Introduction: In the last decade, the progressive reduction of staff turnover decreased together with the number of open competitions, now attended by thousands of candidates, portraying an image of massive unemployment in the nursing profession.
Aim: To describe the socio-demographic profile, the studies, previous work experiences and motivations of a cohort of nurses participats a maxi-competition in Lombardy region.
Methods: A questionnaire with 38 questions was administered to collect the socio-demographic data, information on education and work activities, their experiences and skills and the motivations for participating to the competition.
Results: The 6365 candidates were mainly women; unmarried and young people (mean age 26 years), with a degree in nursing obtained mainly in three years (44%). Over all 80% of respondents started to work within 1 year post-graduation; 57% were participating for the first time to a competition; 27% of candidates were currently employed on a temporary or permanent basis. Nurses would like to work in specialty areas such as critical care units, emergency departments and operating rooms, although their practical training was mainly in medicines and general surgeries.
Conclusions: Most nurses are employed few months after graduation. The massive participation to public competitions depends on the limited number of procedures and not on the excess of nurses. A public competition with thousands of candidates, does not allow to select the most competent nurses and should be reformed.