A STUDY OF NURSES ATTITUDINAL TENDENCIES AT INPATIENT AND OUTPATIENT FACILITIES USING THREE SCALES.
Contributors: Walden University.
Published: 1996
Number of pages: 130
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Administration.; Anthropology, Cultural.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.
Description: It has been suggested in the literature that the theoretical base regarding patient-centered care is not being practiced by the health professionals. Instead, health professionals are seen as taking an impersonal, restrictive dialogue, task-oriented approach to patient-care. The root of the problem, as indicated by the consensus of the literature, is the attitudes exhibited by the health professionals.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore specific attitudinal tendencies of acceptance of others, intolerance of ambiguity, and locus of control to determine whether differences existed between nurses of an inpatient facility group and nurses of an outpatient facility group in terms of the attitudes displayed. In addition, the researcher intended to determine if there were relationships among acceptance of others, intolerance of ambiguity, and locus of control among nurses of an inpatient facility group and nurses of an outpatient facility group.

Data were collected from a sample of 111 registered nurses working in inpatient facilities and 111 registered nurses working in outpatient facilities within New York City, and Nassau and Suffolk counties of New York State. All nurses had a minimum of 2 years of nursing experience.

Instrumentation included the "Acceptance of Others Scale" (Fey, 1955), "Intolerance of Ambiguity Scale" (Budner, 1962), and "Internal-External Locus of Control Scale" (Rotter, 1966). The data were analyzed by way of means, standard deviations, Mann-Whitney U-tests and Pearson product moment correlation coefficients.

In general, there were no significant differences found between the two groups of nurses' attitudinal tendencies relating to acceptance of others, intolerance of ambiguity and locus of control. Although there were no significant differences found between the two groups of nurses' attitudinal tendencies, both groups scored at the negative end of the scales. Thus, both groups were displaying negative attitudinal tendencies as related to acceptance of others, intolerance of ambiguity and showing an external locus of control.

Significant correlations were found between the attitudinal tendencies of acceptance of others, intolerance of ambiguity, and locus of control among nurses of the inpatient facility group and nurses of the outpatient facility group. Overall, the attitudes displayed were undesirable and indicated that there is a major need to implement measures to minimize this apparent concern.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-06, Section: B, page: 3658.

Thesis (PH.D.)--WALDEN UNIVERSITY, 1996.

School code: 0543.