Workplace empowerment of nursing professionals in healthcare industry

Rajalakshmi Ramu; BV Kathyayani

doi:10.4103/IOPN.IOPN_11_19

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Year : 2019 | Volume : 16 | Issue : 1 | Page : 27-30

Workplace empowerment of nursing professionals in healthcare industry

Rajalakshmi Ramu¹, BV Kathyayani²
¹ Clinical Instructor, College of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
² Principal, College of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Date of Web Publication

14-Oct-2019

Correspondence Address:
Prof. Rajalakshmi Ramu
College of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, Karnataka
India

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

DOI: 10.4103/IOPN.IOPN_11_19

Abstract

Background: Nurses have been called upon to lead and to be a partner in the transformation of healthcare Industry. Nurses and nurse managers must be empowered to perform their leadership roles to facilitate positive patient outcomes. Empowerment is possible when employees have access to information, support, resources, and the chance to discover and development. Aims and Objective: The aim was to investigate structural empowerment in nursing staff and to identify training needs to provide continuing education through workshop or conference. The objective of this study was to assess the level of empowerment of nurses working in hospital industry. Materials and Methods: A descriptive research design was adapted for the present study. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to the respondents on the basis of convenient sampling. Quantitative data were entered using SPSS version 17, and it was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: Majority of the respondents expressed that they empowered moderately. Conclusion: Empowerment of the nursing staff is very essential, and nursing administration must understand the importance of empowerment so that nursing professional can lead the hospitals effectively and facilitate the delivery of safe, high-quality patient care in hospitals.

Keywords: Empowerment, information, nurse manager, nurses, positive patient care, support and resources

How to cite this article:
Ramu R, Kathyayani B V. Workplace empowerment of nursing professionals in healthcare industry. Indian J Psy Nsg 2019;16:27-30

How to cite this URL:
Ramu R, Kathyayani B V. Workplace empowerment of nursing professionals in healthcare industry. Indian J Psy Nsg [serial online] 2019 [cited 2023 Mar 28];16:27-30. Available from: https://www.ijpn.in/text.asp?2019/16/1/27/269154

Introduction

Nurse acts as a leader and partner in the transformation of healthcare industry. Nurses and nurse managers must be empowered to perform leadership roles to facilitate positive patient outcomes. Empowerment is possible when employees have access to information, support, resources, and the chance to discover and development.^[1],[2] Employees' outcomes may be determined by the structure of organizational pattern, and also, we can find the relationship between organizational environment and employee's stress, burnout, civility, trust, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and intention to leave the job. Empowerment is the power to delegate the authority in organization by the leaders and senior staff.^[3] Psychological empowerment is defined as motivational process containing the elements of meaning, competence, self-determination, impact, and self-efficacy and also characterized by a sense of perceived control and achieving goals.^[4],[5]

Ransom and Leon et al. found some efforts to empower the direct-care staff by including career ladders, mentoring, and reward systems.^[6],[7] According to Corazzini-Gomez et al., organizational-level empowerment strategies are perceived by the nurse aides, and supervisors are translated into a more empowered workforce.^[8] Failing to empower nurses and managers will lead to retention of difficulties at both the management and employees level and will ultimately impair the delivery of safe patient care.^[9] Lee and Cummings found that organizational support within the institution was more significant contributing factor in empowerment.^[10] Spencer and McLaren found that levels of total and global empowerment were moderate and moderate-to-high, respectively. Further, they concluded that empowered population of nurses differed in relation to access to information, aspects of support, resources and informal power, showing differences in roles, responsibility, hierarchical placement, and barriers to become empowered.^[11]

Aim

The objective of the present study was to assess the level of empowerment of nurses working in hospital industry.

Materials and Methods

A quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive survey in nature was designed to measure the organizational empowerment among nurses, and nurse in-charges are working in selected government hospitals in Bengaluru. Katter's theory of structural power in organizations guided the framework for the model used in this study.^[12] The Nurse Work Empowerment Scale, also referred to as the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire II (CWEQ-II), was distributed to a convenience sample of 260 nurses from all of the clinical units of selected government hospitals to identify the level of workplace empowerment, all participants were nurses and nursing in-charges employed by the hospital during the research, and those who completed their diploma, undergraduate (UG), and postgraduate nursing courses were the inclusion criteria, and those who are not willing for the study and not available during the time of data collection were the exclusion criteria. The response rate was only Out of 226 study subjects, 88.5% (200) of them were filled and returned the questionnaire. 11.5% (26) percent of them were not filled the questionnaires, which was omitted for the data analysis.

The sample size was limited to 200 study subjects chosen by convenient sampling method. Nursing personals who studied diploma, UG, and postgraduates degrees and working as a staff nurse, ward in-charges, and supervisors or managers from different government hospitals in Bengaluru were included in the study.

Tools

The CWEQ-II includes the Job Activity Scale-II and the Organizational Relationship Scale-II, a 19-item scale described by Kanter and a two-item global empowerment scale (in English). The scale rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (none to a lot and strongly disagree to strongly agree).

The researchers took written consent from the participants. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaire. Data were collected from nursing staff during their working hours in June 2017.

Ethical consideration

The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethical Committee constituted by the College of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, and permitted to conduct data collection through nursing department of concerned hospitals. The aims and purpose of the study were thoroughly explained to all respondents, and written informed consent was taken. Participation was voluntary; their information was kept confidential.

The researchers used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) Version 17 for Windows to do the descriptive analysis. Frequency percentage was calculated and analyzed sociodemographic characteristics and workplace empowerment of the selected respondents.

Results

As Given in [Table 1], Majority (59.50%) of the Study Subjects Were in the Age Group of >30 Years, 80.50% of Them Were Female, Maximum 62.50% Were Completed Diploma Nursing, 23% of Them Were Ug, 14% of Them Were Postgraduates, 78.5% of Them Were Staff Nurses, and 21.5% of Them Were Ward In-Charges.[/TAG:2]

Majority of the study subjects believed that they had opportunity in their job, 86% reported that their work was challenging, more than half (67%) reported that their work gave them a chance to gain new skills and knowledge, and 67.5% reported that their work used all of their skills [Table 2]. Less than half 35%–48% of the participants reported that they had moderately access to information from top management regarding the state of the hospital, values, and leadership's goals. Still, 38% reported receiving information about things done well, 52% reported receiving specific comments about things that they could improve, and 57% reported receiving helpful hints or problem-solving advice. Maximum percentage of subjects (38%–57%) reported that they moderately get the support. Less than half of subjects (38%) reported that they lacked resources to meet their job requirements. Majority 35 % of the respondents reported that they often acquiring temporary help when they are in need. Majority 51%, 46% and 49% of the study subjects reported that they receive moderately getting reward, flexibility, and visibility in their job activity. Maximum 50.50%, 47%, 48.50%, and 41% of the study subjects reported that doctors, peer managers, and other professionals, respectively,are getting help from them. The [Figure 1], reveals that majority of the study subjects 90(45%) uncertainly said that work place empowerment should be still more to be effective in role. Majority 74(37%) agreed that their work environment is empowered

Table 1: Distribution of frequency percentage of sociodemographic variables of study subjects (n=200)

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Table 2: Responses based on frequency & percentage towards conditions of work effectiveness (n=200)

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Figure 1: Responses based on frequency distribution of global empowerment scale, n = 200

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[TAG:2]Discussion

Tables and Figure reveal that majority of the study subjects perceived that they are moderately getting opportunity to handle the challenging work and sufficient information regarding their institution, and they articulated that they are getting moderate support from the organization to do the work. Sometimes, only the staff used to get rewards for their work; it may be during the International Nurse's Day. The study subjects felt that the work environment is moderately flexible, but they expressed the need for improvement in the relationship. Most of the subjects felt that the different department-level professionals and nonprofessional workers are seeking help from them in a different way at different situations. Similar to this present study, Regan and Rodriguez conducted in their research study highlighted that nurses felt still need to empower in their workplace.^[9] In another study, McDermott et al. had given a similar kind of results.^[13] Bish et al. found that rural nurse leaders' perceive themselves to be moderately empowered.^[14]

In future, researchers can do comparative study between nurse in-charges and staff nurses or top managers and middle managers of nursing department and they can do the correlation with year of experience and the level of empowerment at workplace. Since this present study was nonfunded research study, the researchers limited the sample size. Generation of the result may be difficult to the universe because the sample selection was followed by convenient method. The required level of opportunity structure is necessary to reduce the barrier to leadership development in nursing staff. The researchers found that some of the study subjects expressed that they were empowered very much: the reason may be the organizational status and their self-motivation to find the opportunity and utilizing properly to the extension. Nursing staff and managers with less experience particularly need to concentrate on additional support and resources.

Conclusion

Empowerment of the nursing staff is very essential. Nursing administration must understand the importance of an empowerment of nursing staff, and it should improve by providing necessary resources, improving communication, and displaying support. Nurse administrators need to facilitate and arrange the training programs through continuing education toward leadership so that nurses and nurse managers can lead the hospitals to effectively facilitate the delivery of safe and high-quality patient care in clinical area.

Acknowledgment

We wish to give heartfelt thanks to Ethical Committee constituted by the Principal, College of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, who permitted to collect the data and participants for their valuable contribution.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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