Abstract
BackgroundThere is a growing understanding that empowerment of interprofessional personnel is linked to job satisfaction levels and quality of care, but little is known about empowerment in the context of cancer care. This study describes how interprofessional cancer care personnel perceive their performance and factors that promote work empowerment.MethodsThis cross-sectional study enrolled 475 (45.2%) of the 1050 employees who work at a regional cancer centre. The participants used two self-administered questionnaires – the Performance of an Empowered Personnel (PEN) questionnaire and Work Empowerment Promoting Factors (WEP) questionnaire – to report perceptions of work empowerment. Both questionnaires’ categories comprise moral principles, personal integrity, expertise, future orientation, and sociality. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, Versions 24 and 25.ResultsOverall, the performance of work empowerment was evaluated as being rather high (overall sum score mean: 4.05; range: 3.51–4.41; scale: 1–5). The category that rated highest was moral principles (4.41), and the one rated lowest was the social category (3.51). The factors that promoted work empowerment also ranked high (3.93; range: 3.55–4.08; scale: 1–5), with personal integrity (4.08) the highest and future orientation (3.55) the lowest. Performance and factors that promoted work empowerment correlated positively, moderately, and highly statistically significantly (r = 0.531; p < 0.001). Statistically significant associations also were found between empowered performance of personnel and empowerment promoting factors (sex, education, leadership position, belonging to an interprofessional team, and time elapsed since training in interprofessional cooperation).ConclusionThe personnel rated their performance and the factors perceived to promote work empowerment rather highly. Personal empowerment can be promoted through teamwork training and supportive management in interprofessional cancer care.
Highlights
There is a growing understanding that empowerment of interprofessional personnel is linked to job satisfaction levels and quality of care, but little is known about empowerment in the context of cancer care
Study design and participants The data for this cross-sectional study originated from a research project, the Research consortium “The Future Magnetic Cancer Centre” (VETÄVÄ) project, which was designed to enhance empowerment and interprofessional collaboration among health care personnel involved in cancer care [24]
Results compared with earlier studies This study examined work empowerment in the context of interprofessional cancer care from the perspective of performance and promoting factors
Summary
There is a growing understanding that empowerment of interprofessional personnel is linked to job satisfaction levels and quality of care, but little is known about empowerment in the context of cancer care. This study describes how interprofessional cancer care personnel perceive their performance and factors that promote work empowerment. Cancer care requires effective collaboration by an interprofessional health care team. Interprofessional collaboration is defined as collaborative interaction among experts with different professional backgrounds involved – in this case, to care for cancer patients – but with common goals [3,4,5,6]. Positive associations were found between interprofessional work-related background variables (training and belonging to a team) and experiencing work empowerment. The present study demonstrates that interprofessional cooperation and work empowerment are interrelated, challenging management to support these activities through education and cultivate teamwork
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