Empowerment and Job Satisfaction among Clinical Nurses in South Korea: Systematic Review

Abstract

Purpose: To synthesize and identify the studies that delineated the relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction in clinical nurses in Korea. Methods: Electronic databases were searched, including KmBase, KoreaMed. riss4u, National Assembly Digital Library and National Discovery for Science Leaders (NDSL) The search terms included nurse, satisfaction and empowerment. Only papers published in Korean were included. Results: Twelve studies, from 156 references screened, were included the final analysis. All studies were non-experimental and used correlational analysis. A significant positive relationship between structural or psychological empowerment and job satisfaction was found. Older nurses with longer clinical experience and higher education background were more likely to have high level of structural and psychological empowerment and job satisfaction. Conclusion: The study results indicate that to produce an empowering work environment, nurse managers have to create a supportive organizational culture, and provide access to resources and opportunity as well as to strengthen emotional support.