As the Department of Veterans Health Administration advances into the 21^st century, it is projected that a significant percentage of the staff in Veterans Health Administration (VHA) will be leaving federal employment due to retirement. This research will investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and employee turnover, to be measured by the participants' intent to leave their jobs in the near future. The setting was one VA medical center with its six satellite clinics. Participants were all VA employees, both supervisory and hourly wage personnel. The study used a quantitative methodology to explore both clinical and administrative employees' intent to leave. Data were collected using web-based surveys. Survey instruments included the Abridged Job Descriptive Index (AJDI), the Stay or Leave Index, and a demographic questionnaire.

The findings suggested that overall employees were satisfied with their jobs. There were facets of their jobs in which they indicated dissatisfaction. However, they entertained the thought of quitting more often than taking the action. The implications from this study were that employee satisfaction does impact the turnover process as alluded to in the literature. In this study, employees have decided to not take the action of quitting the organization and this could be attributed to the failing economy and the difficulty of finding employment opportunities or it could be attributed to the age of the average employee in the study group, which was less than the usual retirement age. These are factors that could be investigated in further study.