Abstract
BackgroundMoral courage is one of the fundamental values of nursing profession and a powerful method of coping with ethical problems. Psychological empowerment is a suitable method of enabling individuals to coping mental pressures of the work environment. This study determined the correlation between moral courage and psychological empowerment of nurses.MethodsThis was a descriptive cross-sectional study. A total of 180 nurses employed in different wards were selected randomly. Data were collected by Demographics Questionnaire, Sekerka’s Moral Courage Scale, and Spreitzer’s psychological empowerment Scale and analyzed with SPSS16 using descriptive and inferential statistics.FindingsThe results indicated that the mean score of moral courage was 21.11 ± 69.90 and the greatest amount of moral courage was in the dimension of “going beyond compliance”. The mean score of “psychological empowerment” was 30.9 ± 73.58 and the greatest mean belonged to “competence”. There was a positive significant correlation between “psychological empowerment” and “moral courage and its dimensions” (P < 0.05).ConclusionThe findings suggested a correlation between moral courage and psychological empowerment. Thus, nurses’ moral courage could be enhanced by reinforcing their psychological empowerment leading to increased patient satisfaction and quality care.
Highlights
Moral courage is one of the fundamental values of nursing profession and a powerful method of coping with ethical problems
The findings suggested a correlation between moral courage and psychological empowerment
The results revealed that nurses enjoy a high level of moral courage so that the greatest mean belonged to “going beyond compliance” and the least mean pertained to “multiple values”
Summary
Moral courage is one of the fundamental values of nursing profession and a powerful method of coping with ethical problems. This study determined the correlation between moral courage and psychological empowerment of nurses. Since distinguishing the good and bad is in the body of ethics, the moral competency of the nursing profession may be rendered as equal to professional competency [3]. Nurses face some moral problems in their daily work that need to be resolved [4, 5]. Nurses ought to possess moral courage to perform on the basis of what is considered ethically right provided personal values and criteria correspond to the accepted healthcare values [4]
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