Accurate assessment of clinical nurses' work environments: Response rate needed

Abstract

Improvement of hospital unit work environments is key to quality patient care, productivity, nurse retention, and job satisfaction. Accurate measurement of such environments is necessary prior to introduction and evaluation of improvement structures and strategies. Characteristics and attributes of work environments are group level phenomena. Accurate assessment of these phenomena requires survey response rates of sufficient size to ensure sample representativeness and data that can reliably be aggregated to group level. What is the sufficient response rate? This question was answered through psychometric testing of five random samples from the population of 23 M.D. Anderson Cancer Center clinical units that had 100% response rates on an environmental survey. Response rates of 40% or more had acceptable psychometric properties for unit-specific scales.

An observational study: associations between nurse-reported hospital characteristics and estimated 30-day survival probabilities

“…Based on recommendations for cut-off points for response rates, four hospitals were excluded because the response rate was below 40% 26. Additionally, one hospital that specialises in cancer care was excluded, and the final sample was 30 hospitals.…”

Incentives and Procedures Effective in Increasing Survey Participation of Professional Nurses in Hospitals

“…44 This can effectively be done through surveys and questionnaires, if there is sufficient participation to produce accurate, reliable data that are representative of the unit population of staff nurses. 7 Use of an evidence-based management practice approach to obtain adequate response rates will not only make clinical nurses sit up and take notice of the organization's priorities and desire to improve work environments for better patient care but also demonstrate to clinical nurses the value of evidencebased practice and of their perceptions of the quality of their work environments. 44 In spite of the limitations noted above, this study provides the information nurse leaders need to engage in the "best management practice" of Benchmarking.…”

“…To obtain such data, environmental survey response rates of 40% to 50% of the unit RN complement are needed. 7 How can such response rates be obtained from clinical nurses working in hospital environments characterized by a work complexity unique among professional practitioners?…”

Impact of Healthy Work Environments and Multistage Nurse Residency Programs on Retention of Newly Licensed RNs

“…Forty Magnet hospitals were selected on the basis of (1) ''excellence'' designations (Balridge, 100 Top Hospitals, Best Places to Work) in addition to Magnet; (2) type of hospital (community teaching, academic, community), geographical location (census track regions), and size of community in which the hospital was located (G100,000; 100,000 to 500,000; 500,000 to 1 million; and 91 million); and (3) 41 To obtain a national picture of the extent to which clinical nurses perceive they practice in clinical environments that enable provision of safe, quality patient care, a national Magnet hospital profile (NMHP) utilizing samples from EOM administration to clinical nurses in more than 1,000 hospitals (n = 253 Magnet hospitals) was established. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc multiple comparisons using Tukey statistical procedures on unitaggregated data identified the statistically significant (P Q .05) homogeneous subsets.…”