الفهرس 
EmpowermentOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Nurses often work within a climate of disempowerment along with high organizational demands placing them under stress. Nurses are not powerless due to lack in their competence or motivation, but because lack of awareness and enabling system and structure. Thus, many hospital and nurse administrators provide staff nurses with low control over their practice. This would jeopardize nurses’ physical and emotional wellbeing, with lowed commitment and disengagement, and ultimate adverse effects on the quality of patient care. The aim of this study was to investigate empowerment and job satisfaction among nurses working at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Ain Shams University.
This correlational study was carried out at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital at Ain Shams University. It included a consecutive sample of 100 staff nurses with at least one year of experience in the current job. Nurses on long leaves during the study were excluded. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. It included the Conditions of Work Effectiveness (CWE), the Psychological Empowerment, and the Job Satisfaction questionnaire, in addition to a section for the demographic and job characteristics. The tool was face and content-validated through the opinions of a panel of experts in Nursing Administration. It was pilot-tested on 10 staff nurses who were not included in the main study sample. The pilot showed a high reliability of the three questionnaire. The fieldwork lasted from December 2014 to June 2015.
The main study findings were as follows.
Nurses’ age ranged between 20 and 40 years, with median 27 years, and 53% had nursing diploma. Their experience years ranged between one and 22years, and 42% attended training courses.
There were generally low levels of work empowerment, the highest being related to support at work (52%), and the lowest related to availability of resources and work facilities (22%).
In total, 29% of the nurses had high work empowerment.
Psychological empowerment was generally high, particularly for efficiency (87%), while only the dimension of impact low (37%).
Overall, 89% of the nurses had high total psychological empowerment.
Only 28% of the nurses had high total empowerment.
Nurses were mostly satisfied with the relations with peers (78%) and compensation (75%), but least with the work environment (53%).
Overall, 66% of the nurses had a high level of total job satisfaction.
Nurses working in departments with less than 20 nurses had significantly higher job satisfaction.
The nurses with high levels of psychological empowerment related to self-determination and impact had significantly higher level of work empowerment.
The nurses with high support at work had significantly higher levels of psychological empowerment.
Nurses with high work empowerment related to the availability of resources had significantly higher level of job satisfaction.
Statistically significant positive correlations were revealed among the scores of work empowerment, psychological empowerment and job satisfaction.
Nurses’ age had a weak statistically significant positive correlation with the work empowerment score (r=0.264).
The number of nurses in the unit had statistically significant weak negative correlations with the scores of work empowerment (r=-0.209) and job satisfaction (r=-0.391).
Nurse’s age was the statistically significant independent positive predictor of the work empowerment score.
Nurse’s married state was the statistically significant independent positive predictor of job satisfaction score, whereas, higher qualification, and more nurses in the unit were negative predictors.
In conclusion, the nurses in the study settings have low work empowerment, high psychological empowerment, but their total empowerment is low. Their job satisfaction is generally high. Empowerment and job satisfaction are inter-correlated and are influenced by nurse’s age, , marital status, and qualification, in addition to the number of nurses in the unit.
In view of the study findings, the hospital management should exert more efforts to empower staff nurses through increasing the availability of resources and work supplies, providing more support at work, encouraging participation in decision-making and in- service training. The relations with supervisors need to be improved as well as the work environment. Further research is proposed to assess the effect of improving staff nurses’ empowerment on their job satisfaction.