African Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(3), pp. 974-986, 4 February, 2011 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM DOI: 10.5897/AJBM10.877 ISSN 1993-8233 ©2011 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper The role of human resource management and nurses' job satisfaction in medical service organisations Ms Javaria Khaliq 1 , Muhammad Zia-ur-Rehman 2 and Majed Rashid 3 1 Islamabad, Pakistan. 2 NUML Islamabad, Pakistan. 3 Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Accepted 27 October, 2010 The scarcity of nurses nationwide has been documented. As population increases, there is an increase in hospitals’ strains, thereby creating difficulty to find and keep good and qualified staff nurses. Job satisfaction of nurses and assurance has been an essential concern for hospital management. High staff absence and turnover, affect the hospital management which takes toll. Satisfied nurses tend to be more fruitful, innovative and dedicated to hospitals. The general models of job satisfaction focus on the view that a person has about his/her work. Job satisfaction or dissatisfaction not only depends on the type of work, but also on the perception of job. The study aims to find out the effects of ‘human resource’ in terms of results to be achieved so that it can give a basis for assessing the effectiveness of the process carried out. Non-probability sampling technique was used and 110 female nurses from three government hospitals (Advanced Hospital Hasanabdal, POF Hospital Wah Cantt and District Hospital Haripur) were selected for the study. Key words: Government hospitals, Advanced Hospital Hasanabdal, POF Hospital Wah Cantt, District Hospital Haripur, job satisfaction, qualified nurses, hospital management, fruitful, innovative, perception, dissatisfaction, scarcity. INTRODUCTION Shortage of nurses is seen and documented world wide. As an increase is seen in the population and in the capacity and number of hospitals, it is difficult to find and retain qualified staff nurses. Job satisfaction of nurses and quality of work is an issue for hospital administration. Work quality depends on the job satisfaction of the nurses. This is therefore a management’s responsibility to frequently ensure the level of satisfaction to manage the nurses accordingly. Nurses’ job satisfaction and HRM Nurse and patient relationship and caring are the heart of nurses’ job in the hospital. Nurse and patient relationship is centered on the physical, emotional, social and medical problems of the patient. It develops anxiety, anger and *Corresponding author. E-mail: scholarknowledge@gmail.com. dissatisfaction, as the patient do not always recover on time. It causes stress to the nurses and leads to burnout. Maslach describes job dissatisfaction or burnout as an emotional situation of overtiredness and decreased personal achievement between people who do public jobs. Emotional tiredness is the decrease of the emotional control, when nurses find that they are unable to administer their duties. Depersonalization is a negative feeling and attitude, portrayed by nurses, as a result of which they become unkind toward their patients. Decreased personal achievement has a negative effect on them, particularly with respect to the care for the patients. They develop a feeling of dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their achievements. This causes a negative and unsafe outcome, which results in job dissatisfaction and burn out on other workers, their patients and hospital too. The studies of Maslach and her colleagues recommended that burn out directly decreased the caring quality; and was found to be a cause of turnover, absence and low morale. Burnout also causes sleeplessness, tiredness, drugs addiction,