Monday, November 3, 2003

This presentation is part of : Work Place Issues

Workplace Empowerment as a Predictor of Nurse Burnout in Restructured Health Care Settings

Heather K. Spence Laschinger, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, Joan Finegan, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, Judith Shamian, RN, PhD, Health Canada, Nursing Policy, Ottawa, ON, Canada, and Piotr Wilk, MA, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
Learning Objective #1: Discuss ways of creating empowering work environments for nurses
Learning Objective #2: Discuss the impact of structural and psychological empowerment on nurses' burnout

Objectives: Kanter’s (1993) Theory of Organizational Empowerment provides a framework for investigating the role of empowering work conditions among nurses. Kanter maintains that work environments which provide access to information, resources, support, and opportunity to develop are empowering and enable employees to accomplish their work in meaningful ways. The main objective of this study was to test a model derived from Kanter’s theory linking the effects of structural and psychological empowerment at one point in time to nurses’ reports of burnout three years later. This time lag enhances our ability to interpret the results by reducing potential concerns over temporal causality confronted with cross-sectional research.

Design: A longitudinal design was used to test the model in a random sample of 192 Canadian staff nurses.

Methods: Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of registered nurses. The questionnaires used were the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II, Spreitzer’s Psychological Empowerment Scale and the Emotional Exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey.

Findings: Structural equation modelling analyses revealed a good fit of the data to the hypothesized model (Chi-square=198.68, df=85, IFI=.90, CFI=.90, RMSEA=.08). Perceptions of structural empowerment had a significant direct effect on psychological empowerment (.435), which in turn, had a significant effect on perceptions of emotional exhaustion (-.283).

Conclusions: Nurses’ perceived access to workplace empowerment structures resulted in increased psychological empowerment at Time 1 and these feelings of empowerment were predictive of reported burnout levels at Time 2. These results support the expanded theoretical model of nursing empowerment and strengthen those of previous cross-sectional research linking empowerment to burnout among nurses.

Implications: The results suggest that fostering environments that enhance perceptions of empowerment can be an effective way of preventing burnout among nurses.

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