Concept Of Nurse Empowerment

Psychological empowerment

Structural empowerment is only part of the story. Nurse empowerment is not merely a sharing or delegation of power, but a motivation from within. Conger & Kanungo (cited in Manojlovich 2007) developed the idea of psychological empowerment, which viewed it as a process of motivation. Spreitzer (1995) built upon this perspective and stated that successful psychological empowerment manifests as a sense of job meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. This is in harmony with the essential constituent of professional judgment.

Nurses’ decision-making behavior is affected by their values and beliefs on whether they should make decisions. Nurses who hold ‘paramedical’ or ‘bureaucratic’ role values rely on

Starting from the mid-1980s till nowadays, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined health promotion as “a process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their own health” (WHO 2014).

This movement of patient-centered care rendered a paradigm shift into therapeutic nurse-patient relationship. Based upon equality and mutual respect, Ellis-Stoll & Popkess-Vawter (1998) stated that patients are seen to be an active participant in the relationship and are responsible for their own health. Empowerment is a therefore a partnership and mutual decision-making (Rodewll 1996). Instead of paternalistic behavior, nurses assume the role of facilitator and empower patients through offering knowledge, resources and

However, empowering nurses is accompanied with risks. In the health care industry where life and deaths are major concerns, faulty judgment may lead to dire consequences. This may be one of the reasons that organizations are still refrained from fully empowering nurses to make autonomous judgments. There has also been criticism that although patients want to be informed, not all of them want to make the decision (Levinson et al. 2005), despite various degrees of readiness, willingness and ability do not diminish nurses’ obligation to uphold patients’ rights and interests. Moreover, most of the studies took place in foreign countries. Nowadays Chinese culture is a mixture of traditional obedience and modern individualism, whether empowerment exerts similar consequences and whether nurses demand for autonomous judgment here is an underexplored area. All of these imply plenty of room for further research