How do healthcare unit managers promote nurses' perceived organizational support, and which working conditions enable them to do so? A mixed methods approach

Abstract

Healthcare unit managers are pivotal to promote nurses' Perceived Organizational Support and hence to ensure nurses' health and well‐being, as well as high‐quality care. Despite this fact, there is a dearth of studies addressing how healthcare unit managers act and organize their work to promote nurses' Perceived Organizational Support and which working conditions enable them to do so. Through a mixed methods approach, comprising qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys among healthcare unit managers and nurses, this paper underscores that healthcare unit managers' availability to their nursing staff was essential for their ability to promote nurses' Perceived Organizational Support, and that responsive support from the care unit managers' superior management, administration, and managerial colleagues constituted enabling working conditions. Superior manager support strongly promoted the care unit manager's own Perceived Organizational Support, which, in turn, was positively correlated with nurses' organizational climate of Perceived Organizational Support.

The role of perceived organizational support for nurses' ability to handle and resolve ethical value conflicts: A mixed methods study

“…These results highlight the importance of investing in an ideological alignment in the organization related to the caring mission, to avoid ethical distress. Such managerial investments may prevent nurses from becoming resigned and cynical about the organization (Gadolin et al, 2022). Thus, the qualitative results underscore the need to align the organizational support toward professionalization of nursing, with supporting dimensions such as professional specialization, autonomy, and social recognition of roles and responsibilities (Gunn et al, 2019).…”

Moral Distress, Health and Intention to Leave: Critical Care Nurses’ Perceptions During COVID-19 Pandemic

“…However, a Swedish study by Gadolin et al (2022) has shown that nurse managers emphasized the importance of being available to their staff. They tried to achieve this and compensated for insufficient availability.…”

“…They tried to achieve this and compensated for insufficient availability. On the other hand, being highly available, providing daily support and meeting individual as well as collective needs might be overwhelming for nurse managers ( Gadolin et al, 2022 ). There is a need for further investigation about ICU nurse managers and their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic to be better prepared in the future when crises arise.…”

Organisational and leadership skills towards healthy workplaces: an interview study with registered nurses in Sweden

“…Psychosocial factors, for example limited staffing and conflict management, caused by increased administrative tasks among first-line managers, affect work stress and ill health at the workplace, and why both RN's and managers' workload are important to manage [4][5][6]. Committed working conditions is required to create supporting caring environment including well planned information structure for patients, relatives, and staff [7], therefore perceived organizational support is highlighted to create sustainable workplaces for RN's [8]. A well-functioning organisation structure with specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time-specific goals give possibilities for team members to take response for the care units tasks [4,9].…”