Perception of Nursing Empowerment and Intent to Stay
Abstract
Nursing turnover and the evolving nursing shortage has continued to receive much attention from health care organizations. It is predicted that there will be 1.2 million job openings in nursing by 2020. Work empowerment has been associated with organizational commitment and intent to stay in current job. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if there is a relationship between the perception of organizational structural empowerment and intent to stay. The theoretical framework utilized was Kanter's Structural Theory of Organizational Empowerment. The population for the study included 1,159 nurses in a large, nonprofit, Midwest medical center. Data was collected through an online survey with a response rate of 22.7%. The overall results demonstrated perceived moderate levels of structural empowerment. Higher structural empowerment scores were noted in the respondents indicating intent to stay. The research demonstrated a positive correlation between empowerment scores and intent to stay.