How Robots Help Nurses Focus on Professional Task Engagement and Reduce Nurses' Turnover Intention.

PURPOSE To examine how robot-enabled focus on professional task engagement and robot-reduced nonprofessional task engagement are related to nurses' professional turnover intention. DESIGN We adopted a two-wave study design. METHODS We collected the first wave of data in a large hospital in Taiwan during October and November 2019 and the second wave between December 2019 and February 2020. We used the data collected from 331 nurses who participated in both waves. FINDINGS We found that robot-enabled focus on professional task engagement is positively related to nurses' overall job satisfaction and perceived health improvement. Robot-reduced nonprofessional task engagement is positively related to nurses' perceived health improvement. Both overall job satisfaction and perceived health improvement are negatively related to nurses' professional turnover intention. CONCLUSIONS Robots' ability to focus nurses' efforts in professional tasks may help improve nurses' health and overall job satisfaction, and by extension reduce their turnover intention. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Nurse managers could suggest hospitals introduce robots, particularly those that can share nurses' nonprofessional workload. This, meanwhile, could focus nurses' efforts on professional task engagement.