Paper
Saturday, 22 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Public Health Initiatives
Home Health Care Nurses' Perceptions of Empowerment
Kathleen Williamson, PhD, RN, Nursing, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Learning Objective #1: Describe how individual empowerment is manifested and identify individual factors that could have an impact on nurse empowerment.
Learning Objective #2: Discuss how individual empowerment influences home health care nurses and the care they provide to clients.
           This exploratory study involved the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine home care nurses’ perception of empowerment and how it influences their decisions in the home clinical setting. Exploring the individual factors that could impact empowerment, the study examined the individual nurse’s assessment of their own empowerment and factors that influence it.                  Fifteen nurses were self-selected to participate. All completed an interview, were observed and given Spreitzer’s Psychological Empowerment Instrument (PEI) to complete. A framework analysis was performed to identify mutually exclusive and exhaustive emergent themes and patterns within the data. Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) Cognitive Model of Empowerment was used to develop themes related to empowerment.             Overall, home care nurses in this study believed they were empowered. They described that empowerment is in the interaction between nurse and patient, and nurse and health care provider. They perceived being empowered as independent, confident, trusting and comfortable with providing good quality care. They also believed that having the ability to practice collaboratively and build professional relationships with physicians, nurses and other health care professionals was an essential component of empowerment. Nurses in this study perceive empowerment as having meaning, choice and competence in their job. The dimension of empowerment that was missing was the ability to make an impact on the organization.

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