The purpose of this study was to examine effects of empowerment and self-efficacy on the psychological well-being of nurses in university hospital. 340 nurses who were working at G University Hospital in J City Gyeongsangnam-do participated as subject...
The purpose of this study was to examine effects of empowerment and self-efficacy on the psychological well-being of nurses in university hospital. 340 nurses who were working at G University Hospital in J City Gyeongsangnam-do participated as subjects for this study.
A field survey was conducted from 4 to 24, March, 2005. Researcher visited personally nurses and distributed 340 questionnaires to them. A total of 337 questionnaires were collected. Recovery rate was .991. 6 incompletely answered questionnaires and 2 from nurses who had worked less than 6 months(part-time) were excluded, then 329 questionnaires were used to analysis. The tenure of the subjects ranged from 1 to 25 years(mean=7.69, standard deviation= 6.186). Their age ranged from 22 to 51 years(mean=30, standard deviation =6.254). By subjects status, 21 nurses (6.4%) were of 3rd class, 101 (30.7%) of 4th class, 183 (55.6%) of 5th class, and 24 (7.3%) of part-time. By department, 195 nurses (59.3%) worked at general wards and 134 (40.7%) at special departments. All of the subjects were female. Nurses' Working Life Questionnaire was developed for this study. This questionnaire was consisted with 22 items for empowerment, 33 for self-efficacy and 26 for psychological well-being, then total 81 items included. According to the result of the item analysis, the reliability(Cronbach's a) was .89 for the 22 items for empowerment, .86 for the 33 items for self-efficacy, and .92 for 26 items for psychological well-being. Thus each showed reliable internal consistency.
SPSS 11.5 for Windows was used to analysis the collected data for this study. Simple descriptive statistics such as the means (standard deviation) of each variable and simple correlations among the variables were calculated. Also multiple regression analysis in order to analyze the effects of empowerment and self-efficacy on emotional well-being were performed. Standard multiple regression analysis were performed, then based on these results stepwise(forward) multiple regression analysis were performed.
The results of this study are summarized as follows.
First, job-related empowerment had a positive effect on nurses’ emotional well-being. Empowerment was positively related with ‘pleasantness’ and ‘calmness’ was negatively related with ‘depression'. Accordingly, we conclude that nurses with many experiences in participative decision-making, autonomy and control in their job related activities feel more psychological well-being. These results supports hypothesis 1 of this study.
Second, self-efficacy, nurses’ confidence in their job, was positively related with nurses’ psychological well-being. Those with strong confidence and self-assurance appeared to feel more ‘pleasantness’ and ‘calmness’ in their job performance and much less ‘depression’. These results supports hypothesis 2 of this study.
Finally, the interactive effect of empowerment and self-efficacy on psychological well-being was not significant. The result rejected hypothesis 3 of this study. Thus it was assumed that, if nurses haven't self-assurance and confidence in the job, they don't feel self-efficacy, and then the effect of empowerment cannot be expected from them even if empowerment is enhanced in their job performance. The result suggests that nurses can attain psychological well-being in their job from high empowerment regardless of self-efficacy or from high self-efficacy regardless of empowerment.