Evaluation of Intensive Care Nurses' Opinions Related to Nursing Personnel Empowerment

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The study was conducted to determine the concept of the personnel empowerment, which is one of the trending concepts of modern management, to evaluate intensive care nurses' opinions on the personnel empowerment and to determine level ofthe perceptions of strengthening and factors affecting their perception levelsof strengthening. METHODS: It was carried out 109 intensive care nurses who work at the intensive care units of a training and research hospital and a public hospital after obtaining permission from the Rize Provincial Public Hospitals Union, Office of the Secretary General. Data was collected with the information form, personnel empowerment questionnaire, and the Perception of Empowerment Scale, and was evaluated with frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, t-test, Mann Whitney U test, ANOVA, and Kruskall Wallis test. RESULTS: The mean score for total Perception of Empowerment Scale was 3,11+-0,64. In the subscales, mean score for participation was 2,68+-0,77, mean score for responsibility was 4,15+-0,94, and mean score for autonomy was 3,06+-0,88. Of the nurses, 65,1% reported that the hospital management prevented them from strengthening, while 45,9% reported that they strengthened themselves. In addition, there were significant differences as statisticallyin the responsibility subscales compared to occupational experience and in the participation subscales compared to the status of participating in meetings (p< 0,05). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In conclusion, perception levels of empowerment of nurses who worked at the intensive care being an important unit, were a medium level, and nurses thought that they were not strengthened at a sufficient level.

Keywords

• personnel empowerment
• intensive care unit
• nurse