Abstract
The demanding nature of nursing work environments signals longstanding and growing concerns about nurses' health and job satisfaction and the provision of quality care. Specifically in health care settings, nurse leaders play an essential role in creating supportive work environments to avert these negative trends and increase nurse job satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between structural empowerment and organizational commitment of nurses. 491 nurses working in Zanjan hospitals participated in this descriptive-correlational study in 2010. Tools for data collection were Meyer and Allen's organizational commitment questionnaire and "Conditions for Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II" (CWEQ-II). Data was analyzed by SPSS16. The statistical tests such as variance analysis, t-test, pearson correlation coefficient and linear regression were used for data analysis. According to the findings, the perception of nurses working in hospitals on "Structural Empowerment" was moderate (15.98±3.29). Nurses believed "opportunity" as the most important element in structural empowerment with the score of 3.18 ±0.79. Nurses working in non-academic hospitals and in non-teaching hospitals had higher organizational commitment than others. There was a significant relationship between structural empowerment and organizational commitment. Generally, structural empowerment (relatively strong) correlates with nurses' organizational commitment. We concluded that a high structural empowerment increases the organizational commitment of nurses.
Highlights
IntroductionAfrican Health Sciences Vol 17 Issue 1, March, 2017 thorough understanding of these three components may help nurses to become empowered and use their power for better patient care
In health care settings, nurse leaders play an essential role in creating supportive work environments to avert these negative trends and increase nurse job satisfaction
We concluded that a high structural empowerment increases the organizational commitment of nurses
Summary
African Health Sciences Vol 17 Issue 1, March, 2017 thorough understanding of these three components may help nurses to become empowered and use their power for better patient care. Laschinger (2005) has classified empowerment scores into three levels of low (6 to 14), average (14.1 to 22) and high (22.1 to 30) This tool includes two other questions as overall empowerment measure and validation of participants' responses to 19 main items, that these questions are not counted in determining the score of nurses’ empowerment. The correlation between the two questions of total empowerment with the main questions of structural empowerment was obtained equal to (r=0.78) using Spearman test, indicating the strong correlation between these two parts This structural empowerment tool was translated by the researcher with permission of its creator which for the first time in this study was used for nursing environment in Iranian hospitals. The tool has been repeatedly used in Iran and even in studies on nursing
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