Investigating the Psychological Empowerment of Nurses in Educational Hospitals: A Study in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in Southwest Iran
Author(s): Abdolreza Gilavand* and Pardis Hosseinpour
Abstract
Introduction: Medical education system has been integrated with the health and therapeutic services system in Iran, so investigating the empowerment status of nurses working in educational hospitals is an essential. This study was conducted for the same purpose.
Materials and Methods: The population of this descriptive and cross-sectional study included all nurses working in educational hospitals of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in southwest of Iran. The questionnaires were distributed among all of them by census sampling method. Finally, 235 of them completed the questionnaires. To collect the data, the Spreitzer Empowerment Questionnaire was used. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data through SPSS 22 software.
Results: Investigating the different components of nurses' empowerment revealed that the mean scores of the areas of impact (12.22 ± 2.15), meaning (11.48 ± 3.19), sense of competence (12.89 ± 2.50) and self-determination (12.87 ± 2.48) were at high level. In addition, variables such as employment history, education, age, type of employment and teaching hospital of nurses did not have a significant effect on their psychological empowerment (p>0.05).
Discussion and Conclusion: In general, the psychological empowerment status of nurses in teaching hospitals of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences was evaluated at high level. It is suggested that the managers of educational hospitals to provide the conditions so that the staff consider their work valuable and have an intrinsic interest in it. It could increase their active participation in solving the problems of health systems, medical treatment and education and make them to be an effective and creative member of the hospital.