Creating Empowering Conditions for Nurses with Workplace Autonomy and Agency: How Healthcare Leaders Could Be Guided by Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership (SBNH-L)

Abstract

Laurie N Gottlieb,1,2 Bruce Gottlieb,1,3– 5 Vasiliki Bitzas1,2 1Ingram of School of Nursing, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 2Department of Nursing, Jewish General Hospital, CIUSSS Centre Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 3Department of Human Genetics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 4Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Jewish General Hospital, CIUSSS Centre Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 5Segal Cancer Centre, Jewish General Hospital, CIUSSS Centre Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, CanadaCorrespondence: Laurie N GottliebIngram School of Nursing, McGill University, 680 Sherbrooke West, Suite 1908, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2M7, CanadaEmail [email protected]: The COVID-19 pandemic had the unintended consequence of placing nurses in the spotlight because their knowledge and skills were in desperate need. While it will be years until we fully understand the impact that this pandemic has exacted on the nursing workforce, early studies have found that nurses have been traumatized by this event and many intend to leave the profession This seismic event only further exacerbated an already vulnerable and strained nursing workforce that pre-existed worldwide prior to COVID-19. The pandemic also highlighted the many challenges facing nursing leadership, in particular, how to create conditions to maintain and sustain a healthy nursing workforce. Nurses’ job satisfaction has emerged as an important predictor of whether nurses remain in an organization and stay in the profession. When examined more closely, job satisfaction has been related to nurses feeling empowered to exercise autonomy over their own practice and having agency. Autonomy and agency, in turn, are affected by their managers’ leadership styles. Leaders are instrumental in setting the tone and creating the climate and culture that either values or devalues autonomy and agency. To help leaders create empowering conditions, we have developed a guide for leaders. This guide, based on the value-driven philosophy of leadership called Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership (SBNH-L), is founded on principles of person-centered, empowerment, relationship-focused, and innate capacities (ie, strengths) that are operationalized in eight core values. This guide can be used by leaders as their roadmap to create empowering workplace conditions that value and facilitate nurses’ autonomy and agency.Keywords: nursing, professional autonomy, empowerment, job satisfaction, leadership, agency

Keywords

• nursing
• professional autonomy
• empowerment
• job satisfaction
• leadership