COLLEGIALITY AMONG STAFF REGISTERED NURSES IN ACUTE CARE: TEST OF A CONCEPTUAL MODEL (REGISTERED NURSES).
Contributors: University of Kansas.
Published: 1991
Number of pages: 253
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Industrial.; Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations.
Description: Despite nursing leaders' (Aydelotte, 1987; Curtin, 1983; Styles, 1982) recurrent and emphatic appeals for greater colleagueship among nurses, little research has been conducted to describe, explain, and guide the improvement of working relationships among nurses. The purpose of this descriptive correlational study was to test an investigator-developed (Hansen, 1989) conceptual model for collegiality with 539 staff registered nurses in two large midwestern metropolitan hospitals. The focus of the study was relationships among the proposed dimensions of collegiality--work group cohesion, job involvement, substantive exchange, and between the dimensions of collegiality and indicators of its proposed individual and contextual antecedents.

Staff registered nurse participants representing a broad range of nursing specialties provided responses to questionnaire items in a single data collection. Pearson product moment correlations, stepwise multiple regression, and contextual regression analysis were used to test eight research hypotheses about relationships among and between indicators of model variables. Analysis was performed at both the individual and work group levels.

The dimensions of collegiality exhibited low to moderate interrelationships. Sufficient common variance (38.3%) existed to warrant treating the three dimensions as a single construct for the purposes of model testing. At the individual level of analysis, stepwise multiple regression demonstrated that subsets of antecedent indicators were meaningful in predicting collegiality. Seven variable indicators--work involvement, organizational loyalty, control over practice, autonomy, stress related to staffing, leader consideration, work group mean years on the job--accounted for 51.7% of the variance in collegiality. Examination of relationships between clinical specialty and demographic variables and collegiality yielded no meaningful results.

Group-level analysis revealed relationships between antecedents and collegiality similar to relationships at the individual level. Cross-level comparisons showed that although there were some differences in relationships, individual work involvement and contextual organizational satisfaction together accounted for 53.7% of the variance in collegiality.

The study provided support for and further specification of the model. Investment in the work and work group emerged as an important theme in collegiality among staff registered nurses. Recommendations for nursing practice, administration, education, and future research were offered.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: B, page: 5642.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, 1991.

School code: 0099.