Poster Presentation
Friday, July 13, 2007
9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Friday, July 13, 2007
3:15 PM - 4:00 PM
The Sources of empowerment and disempowerment in community-based long-term care nurse
Hsing-Yi Chien, BA, Institute of Community Health Nursing, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan and I. Chuan Li, DNS, Nursing, Institute of Community Health Nursing, National Yang-ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
| Learning Objective #1: understand the sources of empowerment in community-based long-term care nurses. |
| Learning Objective #2: understand the sources of disempowerment in community-based long-term care nurses. |
The need for long-term care in Taiwan is increasing following rapidly aging population and changing of social structures. Most people in Taiwan send their disable family members to the community-based long-term care facilities instead of nursing homes because they are much cheaper, generally closer to their homes, and making visits more convenient. The role of nurses in long-term care facilities is not clear because their work tasks are not clearly identified by the current regulations and this situation results in work stress in Taiwan. The relationship between work stress and empowerment has been shown in other studies. However, little is known either in the relationship between work stress and work empowerment among nurses in long-term care setting or characteristics of work stress and work empowerment for them in Taiwan. This study aims to explore. 1. What situation makes nurse feels empowerment, 2. What situation makes nurse feels disempowerment, 3. What promotes empowerment, and 4. What prevents empowerment. Researcher employed the method of qualitative research. Data collection method was in-depth interview on six community-based long-tern care nurses in Taipei. Each interview was lasted about sixty to ninety minutes and tape-recorded. These tape-recorded data were transcribed literally and analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The study identified four sources of empowerment and disempowerment as follows: 1. family: including family support, care giver, and economic loading, 2. organization: including workload, regulations, and communication, 3. client: including patients and patients’ family, and 4. society: including social status, accreditation, and education. Empowered nurses can find more resources to adapt the work environment and solve problems. Suggestion of this study was to implement some strategies by using empowerment concept in order to decrease work stress of nurses from sources of empowerment and disempowerment.