Facilitators and Barriers Surrounding the Role of Administration in Employee Job Satisfaction in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Adequate summary, respecting the pre-established structure. Exhaustive framework of the theme, with regard to the central themes of work, namely the aging of the population and the implications that this phenomenon has in social and economic terms and particularly in the work of nurses. The relevance of associate engagement, job satisfaction and quality of care provided are highlighted.
Rigorous methodology and properly described.
Accurate data presentation.Presentation and appropriate discussion of results.
Relevant conclusions presented in a clear and succinct manner.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Colleague,

Good day to you and thanks for your time and comprehensive review of our article submission.  We/I appreciate your expertise and valuable time to review the paper.

With respect, Kim Lee, PhD, MSHP, PT, FACHE

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, the paper presents a needed addition to the literature regarding a systematic review of management factors associated with employee job satisfaction in long-term care facilities. The paper was well-organized, and the methods used were clearly stated. I’ve included both minor and major critiques below. I’ve bolded my major concerns. Regarding my main concerns, I believe the paper needs stronger linkages to the literature both in the background section and in the discussion. In the discussion, the authors should support the link between the themes they discovered with the best practices they propose using the literature. Additionally, I believe the theme of “capable and motivated leaders” needs to be more clearly defined and/or explained. Thank you for the opportunity to review this work.     

32 – may want to suggest removing barriers in the abstract as well

46 – suggest removing ‘in’ after US

77- suggest removing “for this quickly expanding population” since the sentence begins with this idea

80 – suggest changing the “?” to a period at the end of the sentence

85 – suggest adding a brief listing of the facilitators and barriers surrounding the role of administration in employee satisfaction in the hospital, then compare and contrast your findings in long-term care in the discussion section

97-98 – suggest removing “relationship to”

110 – suggest changing “Billion” to “billion” as it’s not  proper noun

111 – this section is a nice touch as it highlights the timely and relevant nature of this research given the outbreaks of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities

142 – suggest writing out the full acronym for PRISMA – the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses  

143 – suggest adding a reference and in-text citation for the PRISMA guidelines

164 – suggest changing “strong interrater reliability” to “perfect interrater agreement”; here’s a supporting reference: Viera AJ, Garrett JM. Understanding interobserver agreement: the kappa statistic. Fam med. 2005 May 1;37(5):360-3.

172 – suggest combining Figure 1 and Figure 2 as there are some redundancies between them; both are slightly different versions of the PRISMA flow diagram

180-181 – suggest changing “Each table” to “Tables 1 and 2”

164-169 & 185-194 – suggest combining sections 2.c. and 3.a. as the information presented is redundant

197-204 – suggest moving the content beginning with the sentence, “The summary of the selected…” through the sentence ending in “and weekly consensus meetings” to the materials and methods section of the paper as this section relates to how the analysis was conducted rather than the results of the analysis.

212 – Question for authors: if the research question is to identify facilitators and barriers surrounding the role of administration in employee job satisfaction, should “capable and motivated employees” be considered a facilitator? In other words, all the other facilitators appear to be linked to actions influenced by management. Should this theme be restated to reflect administration’s role in hiring, training, or motivating employees? Are you referring to intrinsic ability/motivation or employee perception of their co-workers?

218-220, 222 – could “enjoyment of building relationships with patients” and “relationships with patients” be combined into a single theme? It looks like you combined them in Table 1, but kept them separate in the text. Suggest combining them as reflected in Table 1.

230 – may want to consider a single theme for “lack of self-care, unrealistic work ethic, and denial of needs”, perhaps, “challenges with personal leadership”; if you keep these themes I suggest changing “denial of needs” to “denial of personal needs”.

237 – Question for authors: could you please explain why “capable and motivated employees” is listed as both a facilitator and a barrier and how the articles to support them are the same?

248 – suggest removing the words, “organizational leaders” and just use “leaders”

251 – suggest changing “associate satisfaction and resident satisfaction” to “associate and resident satisfaction

253 – suggest adding one or two examples from the reviewed articles for each of the most impactful themes; this would give the reader a better idea of how they are operationally defined in the literature

254-262 – suggest removing this section as it is redundant

267 – suggest not using the slang term, “the secret sauce”; would, perhaps, change to “key drivers of job satisfaction towards enhanced organizational performance”

268 – appears that a segment of the figure is missing; may want to replace this figure with a Pareto chart

271-280 – suggest removing this section as it is redundant

285-289 – suggest rephrasing this section; perhaps, could be worded as: “Administrators have the opportunity to address these barriers in long-term care facilities to further demonstrate…”

290 - appears that a segment of the figure is missing; may want to replace this figure with a Pareto chart

293 – I did not see where ‘unrealistic staffing requirements’ falls within the categories of most impactful themes; suggest highlighting this theme in the discussion along with management actions to counter it

309-311 – as mentioned in comment in 212 above, I suggest redefining or relabeling the ‘capability and motivation’ theme; it’s unclear if you’re referring to intrinsic motivation or perception of co-worker motivation, or both

312-313 – rather than ‘creating a supportive and positive leadership style’, you may want to consider ‘using or adopting a supportive and positive leadership style’; I would also note the link between leadership style and creating a positive work culture

 314-317 – would move this note on future research to section 4.d.

322-323 – one could suggest that “lack of communication” could be classified as an organizational leadership characteristic rather than an environmental one

327-330 – suggest supporting these assertions with references from the literature

336-337 – rather than stating that “The study successfully contributed to this purpose by leading to key best practices to facilitate such an environment” would suggest saying that the study’s findings suggest best practices that could facilitate such an environment.

338-341 – suggest supporting these assertions with references from the literature; in others words, what research supports the link between supportive leadership and career and professional leadership development? How do we develop supportive, caring leaders?

345-354 – again, suggest the need to tie your assertions back to findings from the literature. What mechanisms does the literature suggest leads to empowering and motivating employees/positive organizational values? How do these findings link to your themes?

355-358 – what does the literature say about these barriers?

362-363 – would restate “gives administrators guidance on use of best practice” to “suggests best practices for administrators”.

365-366 – suggest rephrasing “this limiting factor” to “not categorizing the settings lends itself to the generalizability of the results in a variety of long-term settings.”

373-375 – suggest removing this as a limitation since it was outside the scope of your research, and including just as an opportunity for future study

385 – suggest removing either “key” or “critical” – using both is redundant

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We very much appreciate your time and expertise in reviewing our manuscript and work.  Your recommendations were very helpful and we have addressed your recommendations in an honorable and diligent manner. 

Please see attached document as we used the attached document as a checklist and quality assurance document. 

We look forward to your thoughts and any further clarification needed.  

With respect, Kimberly (Kim) Lee, PhD, MSHP, PT, FACHE

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article deals with a very topical subject which relates to several disciplinary fields and falls particularly in the field of aging studies by its empirical ground. It is based on an extensive literature review and involves research in the rules of the art. The study succeeds in highlighting results concerning the key critical components to set in place for the promotion of associate satisfaction. The reviewer deplores two things: a) the lack of link of the main concepts with the specific literature related to the aging studies and b) the lack of definition of the main facilitators of satisfaction (leadership, empowering and developing employee set) and the explanation of the preferred approaches in order to give a clear and complete understanding of the value of the results.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Greetings.

We appreciate your valuable time in reviewing our manuscript and work.  Thank you.  Your comments were helpful and we have revised the manuscript in keeping with your recommendations.

Peer Reviewer’s Comments: The article deals with a very topical subject which relates to several disciplinary fields and falls particularly in the field of aging studies by its empirical ground. It is based on an extensive literature review and involves research in the rules of the art. The study succeeds in highlighting results concerning the key critical components to set in place for the promotion of associate satisfaction. The reviewer deplores two things: a) the lack of link of the main concepts with the specific literature related to the aging studies and b) the lack of definition of the main facilitators of satisfaction (leadership, empowering and developing employee set) and the explanation of the preferred approaches in order to give a clear and complete understanding of the value of the results.

 

Line #	Reviewer’s Edits	Changes Made or Not Made
Not included	a)Lack of link of the main concepts with the specific literature related to the aging studies b) Lack of definition of the main facilitators of satisfaction (leadership, empowering and developing employee set) and the explanation of the preferred approaches in order to give a clear and complete understanding of the value of the results	Authors added content and linkage to the literature as recommended in 1b in Job Satisfaction section and also in the Discussion section of the manuscript.

With respect, Kim Lee, PhD, MSHP, PT, FACHE

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the revised text.