The purpose of this field study was to measure the influence of three factors on the adoption of information technology in a health care setting--namely, attitudes toward using the technology, subjective norms or beliefs about others' expectations, and perceived voluntariness. Approximately 77 percent of the variance of intent to use the technology was explained by three attitude variables (beliefs related to perceived relative advantage and compatibility with previous work patterns as well as result demonstrability), and one variable associated with subjective norms (influence of a senior policymaker, the director of nursing). Use of this model may provide insights for administrators managing the process of information technology implementation in health care.
This exploratory study examines the ethical justification that cancer care and dementia care nurses gave for active voluntary euthanasia. A convenient sample of 319 nurses working in seven countries was interviewed using a structured interview guide. The great majority of the nurses could not ethically justify active voluntary euthanasia. Even if the law changed, only 96 of the total sample viewed active voluntary euthanasia as ethical. For those nurses who could ethically justify active voluntary euthanasia, the majority did so because of the patients' suffering.
To identify meaningful types of rewards and the consequences of rewards as expressed by Finnish registered nurses working in primary and private healthcare.
Previous studies have found significant associations between nurses' rewards and both their commitment and job satisfaction. Furthermore, appropriate rewards can have beneficial effects on factors including workforce stability and occupational satisfaction that are highly important in times of nurse shortages.
A cross-sectional, qualitative interview study.
Data were collected via individual semi-structured interviews (n = 20) with registered nurses working in Finland's primary and private healthcare, and subjected to qualitative content analysis.
Six meaningful types of rewards were identified by the registered nurses: Financial compensation and benefits, Work-Life balance, Work content, Professional development, Recognition, and Supportive leadership. Rewards encouraged respondents to perform their work correctly and reinforced occupational satisfaction, but also caused feelings of envy and stress.
It is essential to pay attention to nurses' preferences for particular rewards and to reward management. When designing effective reward systems for registered nurses, it is not sufficient to provide financial rewards alone, as various kinds of non-financial rewards are both meaningful and necessary.
When trying to improve registered nurses' commitment and job satisfaction through reward management, it is important to listen to nurses' opinions to create a reward system that integrates financial and non-financial rewards and is fair from their perspective. Healthcare organisations that offer registered nurses a holistic reward system are more likely to retain satisfied and committed nurses at a time of increasing nursing shortages.
Division of Innovative Care Research, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Electronic address: lisa.smeds@ki.se.
Hospital organizational features related to registered nurses' (RNs') practice environment are often studied using quantitative measures. These are however unable to capture nuances of experiences of the practice environment from the perspective of individual RNs. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate individual RNs' experiences of their work situation in cancer care in Swedish acute care hospitals.
This study is based on a qualitative framework analysis of data derived from an open-ended question by 200 RNs working in specialized or general cancer care hospital units, who responded to the Swedish RN4CAST survey on nurse work environment. Antonovsky's salutogenic concepts "meaningfulness", "comprehensibility", and "manageability" were applied post-analysis to support interpretation of results.
RNs describe a tension between expectations to uphold safe, high quality care, and working in an environment where they are unable to influence conditions for care delivery. A lacking sense of agency, on individual and collective levels, points to organizational factors impeding RNs' use of their competence in clinical decision-making and in governing practice within their professional scope.
RNs in this study appear to experience work situations which, while often described as meaningful, generally appear neither comprehensible nor manageable. The lack of an individual and collective sense of agency found here could potentially erode RNs' sense of meaningfulness and readiness to invest in their work.
Nurses' perception of nursing research is an important variable affecting the successful development of a clinical nursing research program. The objectives of this study were to: examine the perceived value, role, interest, support and experience of cardiac nurses in nursing research; to determine the effects of age and level of education on their perceptions; and to analyze the reliability of Alcock et al.'s questionnaire. The survey was administered to 313 nurses with a response rate of 46%. Frequency distributions were obtained on individual survey items. MANOVAs were performed as a function of age group and education level, followed by post hoc ANOVAs. Findings showed nurses valued nursing research particularly as it related to clinical practice decisions and solutions to patient care problems. They saw a participatory role in the first stages of the research process. Age was not a factor in nurses' perceptions of nursing research with the exception of perceived support. Diploma nurses indicated higher levels of perceived value (p = 0.000), role (p = 0.034), interest (p = 0.000) and support (p = 0.017) for nursing research than baccalaureate nurses. The Cronbach reliability coefficient of each area indicated high internal consistency (> 0.72). When 5 items in the questionnaire are deleted, the tool exhibits high level of reliability and evidence of construct and discriminant validity.
This study compared surgical patients' (n = 874) and perioperative nurses' (n = 143) perceptions of the quality of perioperative nursing care. The data were collected with a structured questionnaire in five hospital operating departments in Finland. The questionnaire items were divided into five main categories (staff characteristics, nursing activities, preconditions, progress of nursing process and environment); some of these categories were further divided into subcategories. Overall, patients tended to give significantly higher (P
Missed nursing care is an error of omission defined as standard, required nursing care that is not completed or is seriously delayed. Study findings from around the world show that missed nursing care is a global concern.
The purpose of this study was to compare reports of missed nursing care by two types of nurses - registered nurses and practical nurses - in acute care hospitals in Iceland. Former studies in the USA indicate a variance in reports of missed nursing care by staff with different roles.
This was a cross-sectional descriptive study using the MISSCARE Survey-Icelandic questionnaire for data collection. The questionnaire asks about the amount of missed nursing care on the unit for 24 nursing elements (Part A) and 17 reasons of care being missed (Part B). Participants were nursing staff from medical, surgical and intensive care units in all hospitals in Iceland.
A t-test for independent groups showed a significant difference for the overall missed nursing care score (Part A) between registered nurses (M = 2.09, SD = 0.51) and practical nurses (M = 1.82, SD = 0.59) [t(541) = 5.703, p
To explore factors associated with nursing intensity, work environment intensity and nursing resources that may affect nurse job satisfaction and risk of dissatisfaction in outpatient care at one university hospital in Finland.
Much research has been done to study how nursing intensity, work environment intensity and nursing resources are associated with nurse job satisfaction, but not in the context of outpatient care.
This research used a cross-sectional design. The data were collected from the hospital information systems of outpatient units (n = 12) in autumn 2010.
Management style showed a statistically significant association with job satisfaction. The risk of dissatisfaction increased when nursing staff had no influence over the design of their jobs, when conflicts and contradictions were not addressed in the workplace and when feedback was not processed.
Nursing intensity and work environment intensity had no effect on nurse job satisfaction. Nursing resources and patient satisfaction, on the other hand, were important to nurses' job satisfaction.
The results indicate that nursing management should involve nursing staff in the development of their jobs and the care delivery model.
To examine the attitudes of health care workers regarding the withdrawal of life support.
Cross-sectional survey.
Attending staff, house staff, and intensive care unit (ICU) nurses in 37 Canadian university-affiliated hospitals.
Health care workers' ratings of the importance of 17 factors considered in the decision to withdraw life support, and their ratings of five levels of care ranging from comfort measures to intensive care in two of 12 different clinical scenarios.
We surveyed 1361 respondents (149 of 167 potentially eligible ICU attending staff, 142 of 173 ICU house staff, and 1070 of 1455 ICU nurses, with response rates of 89%, 82% and 74%, respectively). The most important factors were likelihood of surviving the current episode, likelihood of long-term survival, premorbid cognitive function, and age of the patient. In choosing the level of care for the patient scenarios, the same option was chosen by more than 50% of respondents in only one of 12 scenarios; opposite extremes of care were chosen by more than 10% of the respondents in eight of 12 scenarios. Respondent characteristics affecting choices included the number of years since graduation, the city and province in which they worked, the number of beds in their ICU, and their assessment of the likelihood that they would withdraw life support in comparison with their colleagues (P
