The Influence of Organizational Climate on Nurses' Autonomy

Abstract

The elements of an organizational climate are significantly related to nurses' autonomy. Positive organizational climate including support, respect, empowerment, communication, rewards, and higher levels of autonomy contributes to higher levels of job satisfaction and recognition for the nurse and increasing productivity that positively influences health outcomes that lead to organizational success. The study aimed at assessing the influence of organizational climate on nurses' autonomy through: assessing organizational climate from the point of view of staff nurses, determining the levels of autonomy among staff nurses, and investigating the relationship between organizational climate and autonomy among staff nurses. This study was conducted at medical and surgical departments in Ain Shams University Hospital and El-demerdash Hospital which affiliated to Ain Shams University Hospitals using correlational comparative design. The subjects for the study included staff nurses assigned to work in aforementioned setting during data collection period. Their total number is (162) nurses (out of them (75) nurses in medical departments and (87) nurses in surgical departments) with a minimum of one year experience. Tools of data collection: Data for this study were collected through two tools namely: The first Tool: Organizational climate questionnaire. It consists of two parts:- First part: included socio-demographic characteristics data of the respondents as; age, gender, marital status, educational qualification, years of experience, and salary. Second part: it was adopted from (Martein, 2006) used to assess organizational climate. It consists of (56) items. This is grouped into ten dimensions namely: work facilitation, concern for employees, team building, decision making, nurse participation, communication, customer' service, quality of the organization, nurse/physician relationships, and compensation. The second tool: Autonomy questionnaire adopted from (Blegen et al., 1993) to measure nurse's autonomy. It consists of (44) items. This items were grouped into two main dimensions: The first dimension is decisions related to patient care: patient care provision, nurses collaboration, patient education, handling patient needs/complaints, and decide on diagnosis-discharge& related issues. The second dimension is decisions related to unit operations related to: arranging their work, planning to deliver high quality of care, developing and revising nursing procedures, and managing unit resources.