Registered nurse (RN) job satisfaction is a major predictor of intent to stay and job turnover, serious concerns to health care leaders. Predictors of job satisfaction include autonomy, control over daily practice, nurse-physician collaboration, transformational leadership, group cohesion, job stress, structural empowerment, and psychological empowerment. In the model of psychological empowerment, stress resiliency is the product of persons' interpretive styles and influences psychological empowerment. This study has evaluated the influence of stress resiliency on job stress, psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and intent to stay using causal modeling. Participants are 464 RNs employed in five acute care hospitals in West Virginia. The final model has provided a very good fit to the data. Stress resiliency is a predictor of psychological empowerment, situational stress, and job satisfaction. This study provides the first evidence of the influence of stress resiliency on job stress, psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and intent to stay in a sample of RNs.

No abstract

The purpose of this predictive, nonexperimental study was to describe the influence of 3 interpretive styles of stress resiliency on phychological empowerment; psychological empowerment has been identified as a primary predictor of RN job satisfaction. Subjects were 142 nurses, randomly selected from 4 unit in 2 hospitals in a mid-Atlantic state. Measures used were Spreitzer's questionnaire for psychological empowerment (Chronbach alpha for this study = .89) and Thomas and Tymon's Stress Resiliency Profile for interpretive styles (Chronbach alpha for this study = .87, .74, and .85, for deficiency focusing, necessitating, and skill recognition, respectively). Regression analysis identified a model predictive of psychological empowerment in which 24% of the variance was explained by skill recognition and deficiency focusing components of interpretive styles, suggesting that nurses who believe they are effective and who do not imagine their own failure add to their own empowerment.

Current literature documents a phenomenon of fear that affects the willingness of health care professionals to care for persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). We attempted to identify differences between nurses who exhibit fearful attitudes toward AIDS and those who do not, based on knowledge and behavior. Taiwan, site of the study, is only beginning to identify the first of its citizens with AIDS. The subjects were a population of caregivers from a culture with little exposure, therefore, either through education or experience, to the disease and the issues it engenders. A cross-sectional, self-administered survey was conducted in 1990 of 1759 nurses in 12 institutions throughout Taiwan. Data on AIDS-related knowledge, fear, and behavior, as well as selected demographic data, were gathered. Analysis revealed significantly less fear of AIDS among nurses who reported three behavioral changes related to AIDS than among those who reported fewer changed behaviors (F = 4.43, df = 3; P < 0.004); those with higher levels of education (F = 3.54, df = 3; P < 0.014); and those who were single rather than married (t = 2.81; P < 0.005).

No abstract