Introduction: The health care system and health care service delivery isessentially dependent on the number of medical staff working in the network,their level of education, work environment and job satisfaction. There is ashortage of nurses’ in Georgia, which has an adverse effect on the health caresystem and patient care outcomes. The aim of this study is to measure thework environment characteristics, job satisfaction and to evaluate theassociation between these variables.Methods: The quantitative research method was used. The WorkEnvironment Scale and a Job Satisfaction Questionnaire were administered.Descriptive statistics were used to describe the sample and results of thequestionnaires.Results: The majority of nurse’s reported lower levels of job satisfaction, workenvironment characteristics.Discussion: The nurse shortage is caused by a variety of reasons, including theinability of the health care system to keep nurses in a workplace. Due to theeconomic situation, nurses' annual salary is very low. The hospitals are tryingto reduce the number of nurses or not to hire additional nurses due toeconomic reasons. Nurses have less will to work with the existing workingconditions. Policy makers should address many issues: improving recruitment,retention and return in order to keep or increase already few number ofnurses. The development of programs to improve the nurse practiceenvironment, especially staffing and resources, could improve nurse retentionand thereby slow down the nursing shortage.