A structural equation model of empowerment factors affecting nurse practitioners competence

Hospital nurses and physicians' experiences practicing patient safety work to recognize deteriorating patients: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Measures to increase patient safety work aim to prevent patient harm and injuries in hospitals and are a priority worldwide. Several hospitals have implemented various rapid response systems to strengthen patient safety. Knowledge is limited concerning how health professionals interact and how they experience competence development and master emergency situations. The aim of the study was to explore and describe hospital nurses' and physicians' experiences with patient safety work, and the implications of this work for collaboration and competence in a hospital.

METHODS

We used a qualitative descriptive design and interviewed 21 nurses and physicians from a hospital in Norway. Data were analysed with systematic text condensation, a four-step thematic cross-case analysis. The study adheres to the COREQ guidelines for conducting qualitative research.

RESULTS

Through analysis, three categories were identified: strengthening a common clinical language for patient deterioration; sharing and transferring competencies across hospital wards and amongst professionals; and balancing time pressure and limited resources. The results showed that the patient safety work contributed to building bridges between health professionals and across hospital levels regarding deteriorating patients. It also provided structure and systematization to the hospital professionals' work with deteriorating patients. However, the results also demonstrated the complexity of maintaining patient safety, pointing to the need to balance limited time and resources in hospital.

CONCLUSIONS

The patient safety work presumably provides better emergency care, which may enhance patient safety in hospital. The complexity of hospital work, however, can influence the patient safety performance negatively, requiring health professionals to adopt robust, up-to-date skills and competencies in observing and assessing patient deterioration. In a busy hospital setting, the ability of health professionals to collaborate and communicate is important as they are faced with the challenges of balancing time-pressure and limited resources, which can potentially compromise patient safety work.

Influences of Structural Empowerment and Demographic Factors on Nurses' Psychological Empowerment

Aim

The objective was to investigate the impact of structural empowerment and demographic factors on the psychological empowerment of nurses.

Background

The empowerment of nurses plays a crucial role in improving patient care and achieving successful healthcare outcomes. When nurses feel empowered in their work environment, they tend to remain dedicated to their jobs and experience higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement.

Methods

This cross-sectional study utilized a convenience sample of 287 nurses recruited from various hospital units, resulting in a response rate of 94.7%. Data were collected through a paper survey consisting of three sections: structural empowerment, psychological empowerment, and demographics.

Results

The first hierarchical regression explains 57.0% variance in nurses' psychological empowerment (F = 78.52, p < 0.001). Age (β = 0.37, p < 0.01) and structural empowerment (β = 0.69, p < 0.001) have a positive influence on nurses' psychological empowerment. Conversely, having a bachelor's degree (β = -0.16, p < 0.01) had a negative impact psychological empowerment. The second hierarchical regression clarifies the specific aspects of structural empowerment that influences positively on nurses' psychological empowerment: access to opportunities (β = 0.13, p < 0.01), support (β = 0.13, p < 0.01), resources (β = 0.35, p < 0.001), and informal power (β = 0.12, p < 0.01).

Conclusion

This study emphasizes the importance of considering demographic variables, such as age and education, in conjunction with structural empowerment to effectively enhance nurses' psychological empowerment. Implications for Nursing Management. Nursing managers should tailor their empowerment strategies based on the demographic characteristics of their nurses. It is essential to focus on providing nurses with access to opportunities, support, resources, and informal power. These insights provide valuable guidance for nursing managers to enhance nurses' psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and overall quality of life. Ultimately, this contributes to positive outcomes for patients, nursing staff, and healthcare organizations.

Assessment of the logistics activities with a structural model on the basis of improvement of sustainability performance

The rationale for prioritizing sustainability in our world, where climate change and unplanned population growth have increased noticeably and resources are exhausted, has affected almost every sector. The logistics sector, which is one of these sectors and undoubtedly directly affects the living resources, constitutes the subject of our study. The study deals with the logistics activities carried out by the companies on the basis of sustainability and the aim of the article is to provide a framework that will contribute to the sustainability initiative of the companies carrying out logistics activities. It provides gains to the literature by investigating the important factors that greatly affect the performance of logistics activities. Accordingly, logistics activities are detailed under the titles of environmental impact, waste management, transportation and warehouse management, resource usage, social impact, internal factors, external factors, and logistics performance factors. These titles are the main dimensions that emerged as a result of literature research and expert opinions. The most important sub-criteria that affect the sustainable logistics performance, which are handled within the scope of the main dimensions, have been determined as 44 with Pareto analysis. These determined parameters are analyzed with the formation of a comprehensive structural model and their importance levels are interpreted, and the findings are interpreted. It is compared with the DEMATEL method. The results of this study, in which sustainable logistics practices are at the forefront, form the basis for improving the sustainability performance of the logistics sector.

Developing an instrument to assess empowering nurse leader communication behaviours

AIM

The overall purpose of the study was to develop an instrument to assess empowering nurse leader communication behaviours.

BACKGROUND

Effective communication by nurse leaders promotes empowerment, yet communication assessments are often broad in nature without specifying precise behaviours.

METHODS

An instrument development process was used to identify empowering nurse leader communication behaviours. Nurses working in United States military health care facilities (n = 240) provided responses to 47 pilot items, along with a 12-item psychological empowerment instrument to test for concurrent criterion validity.

RESULTS

After review of item performance, 12 items were deleted. An exploratory factor analysis supported either a 2- or 3-factor model, with confirmatory factor analyses conducted to validate the underlying latent variables of empowering and limiting behaviours. The final nurse leader communication assessment consists of 2 factors consisting of 20 positive items (empowering subscale) and 15 negative items (limiting subscale).

CONCLUSION

The final 2-factor assessment supports the theoretical premise of the empowering and limiting behaviours. Further testing may provide further dimensional clarity.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Use of the assessment can provide a basis for the development of training for individual nurse leaders or for facility nurse leaders as a collective.

Nurse Educators: Professional Quality of Life Related to Conditions of Work Effectiveness

BACKGROUND

Professional quality of life (ProQoL) is the balance between compassion satisfaction (CS) and compassion fatigue (CF). The experience of CF results from secondary traumatic stress stemming from compassionate caregiving and burnout.

PURPOSE

This study sought to identify the ProQoL of nurse educators and what conditions for work effectiveness affect this ProQoL.

METHODS

An email survey link was sent to nurse educators from the northeastern region of the United States asking for participation. This included demographics, the ProQoL Version 5, and the Conditions for Work Effectiveness Questionnaire version II (CWEQ-II).

RESULTS

The 211 nurse educators reported relatively high CS and relatively low burnout and secondary traumatic stress. When the measures of the CWEQ-II increased, so did their CS. In addition, as the measures of the CWEQ-II increased, their secondary traumatic stress and burnout decreased.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that conditions for work effectiveness such as access to opportunity, resources, information, support, and formal and informal power have a relationship to the nurse educator's ProQoL.

The impact of cultural immersion service learning on BSN graduates: A quasi-experimental evaluation

AIM/OBJECTIVE

The cultural immersion service-learning model evaluated in this study sought to facilitate cultural consciousness of culturally congruent nursing care among predominantly White nursing students attending a university that was racially and culturally homogeneous.

BACKGROUND

Evidence supports the use of cultural immersion service learning during undergraduate nursing programs in developing the skills necessary for effective transcultural healthcare; yet, little is known about its impact beyond the semester of the experience.

DESIGN

This project used a quasi-experimental design to determine if transcultural self-efficacy of BSN graduates among five campuses differed.

METHODS

One campus of the five conducted a mandatory cultural immersion service-learning experience during the graduates' junior year. From a population of 94 BSN graduates of which 30 (32%) graduates participated in the cultural immersion service-learning experience, 53 completed the Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool. Eighteen (34%) of the graduates who participated in the cultural immersion service-learning experience participated in this study.

RESULTS

The transcultural self-efficacy was significantly greater in those graduates who participated in the cultural immersion service-learning experience; yet, no difference was found among graduates of the four campuses not offering the experience.

CONCLUSIONS

The cultural immersion service-learning experience seems to provide nursing students from racially and ethnically homogeneous communities with an experiential learning context which facilitates the development of transcultural self-efficacy.

Nurse empowerment-Linking demographics, qualities and performances of empowered Filipino nurses

AIM

To determine the relationships among demographics, self-assessed empowerment qualities and performances of empowered nurses.

BACKGROUND

Nursing empowerment plays a pivotal role in improving nurses' performances, work productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. There is a dearth in the literature that focuses on their relationships.

METHODS

Using a descriptive correlational design, 201 bedside nurses employed in the National Capital Region, Philippines, were recruited via purposive sampling. With ethical considerations, nurses were asked to fill-up an online questionnaire that includes demographics, Qualities of an Empowered Nurse Scale and Performances of an Empowered Nurse Scale.

RESULTS

Filipino nurses are moderately empowered both in their qualities and in their performances. Pearson's correlation revealed that demographics, qualities and performances have statistically significant relationships. Multiple regression analysis identified age as a predictor of empowerment qualities, and age, employment status and qualities as predictors of empowerment performances.

CONCLUSION

Results indicated that the nurse's level of empowerment increases as the nurse grows older, becomes tenured at work and embodies higher empowerment qualities and performances.

IMPLICATION FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Nurse managers must consider nurse's demographics, qualities and performances in creating an empowering work environment for their staff. They can use the results to develop programmes that aim to increase a nurse's level of empowerment.

Explaining the effect of authentic and ethical leadership on psychological empowerment of nurses

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to explain the effect of authentic and ethical leadership on the psychological empowerment of nurses.

BACKGROUND

Ethics-related leadership styles can play an important role in improving employee performance by influencing job satisfaction. However, no study has investigated ethics-related leadership and its impact on the psychological empowerment of nurses.

METHOD

The present study is a descriptive correlational study with emphasis on structural equations. A random sample of 384 nurses in public hospitals in Tehran responded to three self-report questionnaires.

RESULTS

The authentic leadership variable explains 74.5% of the variance of the psychological empowerment variable. In addition, the variable of ethical leadership explains 87.7% of the variance of psychological empowerment variable.

CONCLUSION

Ethical and authentic leadership is effective on the nurses' psychological empowerment.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Ethical and authentic leadership is necessary for managers to psychologically empower nursing staff. Increasing awareness of capabilities of nurses and how decisions and behaviours affect them, balanced information processing, observance of ethics in the workplace, transparency in communication, information and power sharing, all impact justice in the workplace.

Investigation the correlation between psychological empowerment and assertiveness in nursing and midwifery students in Iran

BACKGROUND

Assertiveness is a key skill for nurses and midwives, and should be considered in the students' education. In this regard, variables such as psychological empowerment, which may have a significant correlation with assertiveness, should be identified and studied.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between psychological empowerment and assertiveness in nursing and midwifery students.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional and correlational study.

SETTINGS

/Participants: This study was carried out on 200 Iranian nursing and midwifery students.

METHODS

The students were randomly selected for the study. The study tools were The Rathus' Assertiveness Schedule and Spreitzer's Psychological Empowerment Scale. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics.

FINDINGS

There was a positive and significant correlation between psychological empowerment and assertiveness. The components of meaning and self-determination had a positive and significant correlation with the assertiveness.

CONCLUSIONS

Since psychological empowerment and assertiveness in decision-making and interaction with colleagues and patients are considered as essential skills for nurses and midwives, we recommend that, required measures should be taken to promote these skills in nursing and midwifery students.