The Institute of Medicine report (2011) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (2014) have promoted the importance of empowering nurses in their roles. A nurse who is empowered in the workplace to make effective decisions affect quality outcomes for the patient, nurse, and organization (Huddleston, 2014).
Nurses’ empowerment and retention
Empowerment is defined as giving individuals the authority, responsibility, and freedom to act on what they know and instilling in them belief and confidence in their own ability to achieve and succeed. Workplace empowerment is a management strategy that has been shown to be successful in creating positive work environments in organizations. Empowering subordinates is a principal component of managerial
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In a review of 20 years of empowerment research; Spreitzer (2007), notes that there are two aspects of workplace empowerment that define the empowerment experience in organizations, structural empowerment: access to conditions that enable optimal role performance and psychological empowerment: employee cognitions in response to working in empowering conditions. Taken together, structural and psychological empowerment represents a powerful approach to creating workplaces that attract and retain individuals to organizations.
Structural and psychological empowerment has a significant effect on job satisfaction and retention of nurses (Lucas et al., 2008). If an employee has access to information, support, resources, and opportunities for growth in the workplace setting, the employee has a stronger sense of meaning, which increases his or her confidence level, autonomy, and belief that he or she may have an impact on the work being completed.
Leadership Style and