Paper
Friday, 21 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Issues and Initiatives in the Workforce
Professional Nursing Practice Environment and Foreign Nurse Performance
Arlene N. Hayne, DSN, RN1, Clara E. Gerhardt, MBA, PhD2, and Jonathan C. Davis, PhD2. (1) Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing, Samford University, Birmingham, AL, USA, (2) Department of Family Studies, School of Education & Professional Studies, Samford University, Birmingham, AL, USA
Learning Objective #1: describe the job satisfaction of foreign nurses and their perceptions of a professional nursing practice environment.
Learning Objective #2: describe the performance of a group of foreign nurses as compared to a peer group.
Solutions to the nursing shortage include a variety of strategies including: recruiting nurses from outside North America to fill vacant nursing positions. The use of foreign nurses has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Limited research on foreign nurses is beginning to appear in the literature. These studies have reported on demographics, job satisfaction, retention, and the presence of professional practice attributes in the work environment. This study will add to the body of research on foreign nurses by examining organizational characteristics that contribute to job satisfaction, perception of role and social support of foreign born nurses and performance as compared to a peer group. Responses to questions concerning the following topics form part of the research and have been collected using the ‘Nursing Work Index-Revised’ and the ‘Occupation Stress Inventory-Revised Edition’: job satisfaction, autonomy, control over practice setting, nurse-physician relationships, organizational support, social support and occupational stress. The ‘Nursing Work Index-Revised’ measures four of the organizational attributes noted in the literature as characterizing an environment supportive of professional nursing practice: autonomy, control over the work environment, relationship with physicians and support of care givers. The ‘Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised Edition’ is a 140 item Likert-type survey that measures three domains. There is a subscale for occupational stress that measures role overload, role insufficiency, role ambiguity, role boundary, responsibility and physical environment. The psychological stress subscale measures strain in the following areas: vocational, psychological, interpersonal, and physical. The personal resource subscale measures recreation, self care, social support and rational and cognitive coping. Performance evaluation comparison will be accomplished by comparing the annual performance evaluation records of the sample of foreign nurses to the annual performance evaluation records of a peer group. Data collection has been completed; interpretation is in progress with results available early spring, 2006.

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