Factors Influencing Nurses' Intention to Leave Profession in Iran

Background: Several reasons account for nurses' intention to leave the nursing profession. Understanding these factors is a step towards reducing such incidents which pose a threat to the nursing profession. This study aimed to identify and rank the circumstances that influence the intention to leave the nursing profession in Iran. Methods: The present study is a cross-sectional analytical study, which employed four other methods to reach a sound conclusion in 2019.The electronic databases, including the Scientific Information Database, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, OVID, Cochrane Library, CINAHL,, were searched for studies published from the year 1998 to December 2018 for scientific studies conducted among factor associated intention to leave in Iran. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) method was then used to extract hidden factors and determine the hierarchical structure of the review's findings. Using the combination of Analytical Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Logic, the weight of each one of the factors that affect the intention to leave the nursing profession was then calculated. Finally, the accuracy of the results of the Consistency Ratio and Fuzzy analytic hierarchical process (FAHP), was calculated and evaluated. Results: The electronic search delivered 100 studies, from which we identified and extracted 26 most occurring reasons for the desire to leave the nursing profession. Based on the EFA results, we identified four criteria (personal, managerial, organizational, and side issues) with eigenvalues ​​higher than 1. The first criteria (personal issues) scored the highest (53.39 %), while side issues scored the lowest (13.40 %) as reasons accounting for the intention to leave the nursing profession. Conclusion: Job stress, the lack of freedom and independence in the clinical environment, discrimination, and the probability of catching an illness have higher prominence in influencing nurses' tendency to leave work. These factors can be mitigated by altering managerial techniques within organizations.