Guidelines for the empowerment of professional nurses in the public hospitals of one district in the Mpumalanga Province

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the perceived lack of empowerment of registered nurses in the Mpumalanga Province. To determine the reasons for the perceived lack of empowerment and the effect thereof on professional conduct after which empowerment guidelines would be developed which managers can apply in order to enhance the empowerment of registered nurses in their service, and in turn cultivate confident nurse leaders. The main study objectives were to describe what empowerment entails, and its effect on professional conduct in the workplace; explore the level of empowerment among nurse managers and registered nurses; ascertain the effect of perceived powerlessness on the professional conduct and behaviour of nurse managers and registered nurses; establish the reasons for the perceived lack of empowerment among nurse managers and registered nurses; determine if there is a difference in the way in which nurse managers and registered nurses perceive the existing empowerment in their public hospitals and to develop empowerment guidelines for nurse managers and registered nurses. Kanter’s Theory of Structural Empowerment formed the basis of the study and guided the structure of the report. This theory contains three components, each with several dimensions resulting in 14 factors to be tested. A quantitative research approach, with an exploratory and descriptive design was used. Using a researcher-developed questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The site population consisted of one randomly selected district containing eight public hospitals in the Mpumalanga Province. All nurse managers and registered nurses in these hospitals were invited to participate in the study. The researcher delivered the questionnaires to the respondents of the eight hospitals that met the inclusion criteria. Two hundred and sixty seven (267) completed questionnaires were collected upon completion resulting in a response rate of 30.2%. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. Generally, the results indicated that the majority of the respondents felt empowered with the dimensions contained under the structural empowerment, psychological empowerment and positive work behaviours and attitudes components of Kanter’s Theory. However the respondents noted that they had limited resources. According to the results those nurse managers and registered nurses who felt empowered, scored strongly in the areas of structural and psychological empowerment. The empowerment guidelines were developed for dimensions which were found to be non-empowering to assist nurse managers and registered nurses in creating workplace environments that could enhance the empowerment of registered nurses in their hospitals.