EMPOWERMENT OF NURSES BY NURSE EDUCATORS FOR EFFECTIVE NURSING PRACTICE.
Contributors: Rutgers University.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 264
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Higher.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: Nurses have had difficulty in conducting professional nursing practice in the hospital setting. The ability to practice professionally is related to nurses' power to do so. Power is defined as having the ability and capability to get things done and achieve the determined objectives of practice.

It is the nurse educator's mission to provide the knowledges and experiences necessary to empower nurses in order that they may fulfill their professional role in bureaucratic settings. Empowerment is the enabling of nurses to practice professionally in the hospital setting through specific activities that were determined as being empowering by Gorman and Clark (1986).

The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine what nurse educators believe about nurses' ability to practice professionally in the hospital and what empowering activities do nurse educators utilize in the education of nurses.

Data were collected from nurse educators in the New Jersey area through the use of an instrument, The Status and Promotion of Professional Nursing Practice Questionnaire, developed by the investigator. Eighty-six percent of the nurse educators who were sent the questionnaire, completed and returned it.

It was found that the nurse educators who participated in the study believed nurses had the ability to conduct professional practice in the hospital setting. This is in opposition to much of literature on the topic. In addition, the nurse educators had adequately utilized only one-fourth of the items that represent empowering teacher activities. Two whole categories of these items, change and sponsorship, were not adequately used by the subjects. The numbers of adequately utilized items was changed when the educational level of the subjects were considered. Doctoral prepared educators had consistently utilized a greater percentage of items.

Nurse educators need to be more aware of the nurse's difficulty in practicing professional nursing in the hospital setting. To prepare nurses for professional practice in the hospital setting, nurse educators should be doctorally prepared and cognizant of their essential empowering role and use empowering teacher behaviors consistently in the education of nurses.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-10, Section: B, page: 4228.

Thesis (ED.D.)--RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, 1988.

School code: 0190.