The Influence Path Analysis of Clinical Nurses’ Job Satisfaction Based on the Dual‐Factor Theory

BACKGROUND: Clinical nurses significantly contribute to sustaining healthcare systems worldwide. However, they experience multiple adverse situations that affect their job satisfaction, which in turn influences the quality of nursing services. AIM: To analyze the pathways influencing clinical nurses' job satisfaction from the perspective of the dual-factor theory. METHODS: We recruited 202 clinical nurses from August to September 2024 using a convenience sampling method for this cross-sectional questionnaire survey assessing job burnout, job satisfaction, and fear of missing out. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method was used to examine the factors, their synergistic effects, and the configurational pathways through which different combinations of factors influence clinical nurses' job satisfaction. RESULTS: The average score for job satisfaction in this study was 60.28 ± 10.51 points. Single-factor analysis showed that age, fear of missing out, and job burnout were significantly associated with job satisfaction. However, fsQCA necessity analysis indicated that no single factor was a necessary condition for high job satisfaction (consistency < 0.9). The configuration analysis extracted six sufficient condition combinations, categorized into two types: hygiene-dominated and motivation-health configurations. Among these, age (as a moderating variable) emerged as a core condition in several configurations. CONCLUSION: The fsQCA method, grounded in the two-factor theory, illustrated the influence of multiple interacting and synergistic factors on clinical nurses' job satisfaction and identified the specific elements contributing to high job satisfaction within various configurations of their roles. This insight helps hospitals and nursing managers identify optimal combination of factors that enhance the stability of clinical nurses' careers and clarify potential improvement pathways from a configuration perspective. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence and a framework for the development of effective interventions to enhance job satisfaction.