Creating Empowering Conditions for Nurses with Workplace Autonomy and Agency: How Healthcare Leaders Could Be Guided by Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership (SBNH-L)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had the unintended consequence of placing nurses in the spotlight because their knowledge and skills were in desperate need. While it will be years until we fully understand the impact that this pandemic has exacted on the nursing workforce, early studies have found that nurses have been traumatized by this event and many intend to leave the profession This seismic event only further exacerbated an already vulnerable and strained nursing workforce that pre-existed worldwide prior to COVID-19. The pandemic also highlighted the many challenges facing nursing leadership, in particular, how to create conditions to maintain and sustain a healthy nursing workforce. Nurses' job satisfaction has emerged as an important predictor of whether nurses remain in an organization and stay in the profession. When examined more closely, job satisfaction has been related to nurses feeling empowered to exercise autonomy over their own practice and having agency. Autonomy and agency, in turn, are affected by their managers' leadership styles. Leaders are instrumental in setting the tone and creating the climate and culture that either values or devalues autonomy and agency. To help leaders create empowering conditions, we have developed a guide for leaders. This guide, based on the value-driven philosophy of leadership called Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership (SBNH-L), is founded on principles of person-centered, empowerment, relationship-focused, and innate capacities (ie, strengths) that are operationalized in eight core values. This guide can be used by leaders as their roadmap to create empowering workplace conditions that value and facilitate nurses' autonomy and agency.

A Mixed-Methods Sequential Explanatory Study of the Factors That Impact Nurses’ Perspectives toward Nurse Practitioners’ Roles in Saudi Arabia

“…Moreover, 77% of the nurses in this study felt that the increases in knowledge and skills were two of the benefits of becoming nurse practitioners. Considering the nurses' optimism toward the roles of nurse practitioners, the health workforce needs to be future-ready through role expansion of the nursing profession to promote productivity and effectiveness [24].…”

Reflective Journaling as Preparation for Spiritual Care of Patients

“…Journal reflections about one's own death proved to increase student awareness of the spiritual nature of death, the importance of connections, and the need for relationships, aligning with a strength-based approach to care focused on promoting empowerment, self-efficacy, and hope. 1,3 Grounding the education in final conversations, participants learned a strength-based focus approach by discovering the need for connections and developing their capacity for loss by understanding those connections. 2,24 Connections comprised the largest category and aligns with current research findings that spirituality encompasses connections that involve relation to others.…”

“…The premise of strength-based care is to promote empowerment, self-efficacy, and hope that lead to innate holistic health and spiritual care. [1][2][3] Spiritual care is often an abstract idea to students, and this disconnect between the reality of not understanding spiritual care with the expectation for delivering spiritual care as a component of holistic nursing creates anxiety and apprehension. Researchers have found that education about the provision of spiritual care is insufficient to prepare health care students for practice and they struggle with this very personal aspect of care.…”

“…Strength-based care, a concept originating from nursing, is grounded in relationship development and personal growth that aligns with the core goals of end-of-life (EOL) care. The premise of strength-based care is to promote empowerment, self-efficacy, and hope that lead to innate holistic health and spiritual care 1-3 . Spiritual care is often an abstract idea to students, and this disconnect between the reality of not understanding spiritual care with the expectation for delivering spiritual care as a component of holistic nursing creates anxiety and apprehension.…”

Application of a Hybrid Multi-Criterion Decision-Making Model for Evaluation and Improvement of Nurses' Job Satisfaction

“…For example, Cortese et al showed that work-family conflict reduces nurses' job satisfaction ( 15 ). Gottlieb et al found that the degree of leadership empowerment affects nurses' autonomy and job agency, which in turn affects job satisfaction ( 16 ). Ho et al showed that organizational support also influences nurses' job satisfaction ( 17 ).…”