Abstract:
This research aimed to study the demographical characteristics including sex, age, status,
the number of family members, educational background, working experience, monthly income,
average monthly income per family and the workplace that affected the readiness of nurses and their
willingness to change workplace to the Association of South East Asian Nations. The samples were
132 nurses in 4 hospitals located in Nakorn Nayok Province. The data was analyzed by frequency,
percentage, average and standard deviation. Independent Samples t-test, One-way ANOVA, LSD
and Chi-Square were employed to test the hypothesis.
The results revealed that most nurses were female, aged between 20-30 years old, single
status holding Certificate of Nurse Assistant with 6-15 years working experience. They had 2 members
in the family. They earned 25,001-35,000 THB per month with average monthly income per family of
60,001-90,000 THB. They have been working for the Ban-na hospital. Their high readiness involved
4 aspects; health service, environmental changing, expertise and English language skill. Most nurses
did not want to change their workplace because their income was enough to survive while some
nurses would like to move to Singapore because their opportunity for advancement was better.
The hypothesis test findings showed that the different sex, age, status, educational
background, working experience, monthly income, average monthly income per family and their
workplace caused different levels of readiness while the number of family members did not. Moreover,
status, educational background, working experience, and their workplace environment correlated with
the unwillingness to move out. However, monthly income correlated with moving out, while sex and
monthly income related with their willingness to change the workplace to 9 other ASEAN countries.