The relationship between nurses' perceptions of empowerment and patient satisfaction

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NURSES' PERCEPTIONS OF EMPOWERMENT
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Introduction
In health care sectors, empowerment is used to describe the characteristics and attributes that are interrelated to patient, nurse and also those attributes that are linked to patient and the nurse. Patient empowerment gives the patient a personal choice of where and how he/she wants to be treated and to be taken care of. In so doing, the patient holds the sole decision making regarding the whole treatment process. This has raised conflicts between the nurse and health providing facilities since they allege that there are too demanding patients and subsequent overutilization of the resources in the medical facilities. This essay focuses on identifying evidence-based nursing practices that highlight the relationship between nurses’ perception towards empowerment and patient satisfaction. It will also highlight some of the lessons learnt from it with respect to exercising the knowledge and expertise gathered in the field of nursing.
In the hospitals and other health care facilities, safety is paramount. This entails provision of safety to both nurses and patients and their families. The structural and psychological working environment for the nurses to perform should be well provided so as to enhance the quality of care that will satisfy the patients. Empowerment of nurses with respect to their work environment is an important factor in acquiring the desirable status patient satisfaction, shared nurse governance and nurse empowerment. Moreover; nursing leadership strives to identify ways to improve and also predict patient outcomes. In an adverse health care environment, empowerment of nurses is vital (Laschinger, et al, 2003).
From Magnet nurse research, several nursing aspects were identified; nurse manager ability, nurse participation in hospital affairs, nursing foundations for quality of care, leadership and support of nurses, staffing and resource adequacy and nurse-physician relations. All these aspects dictated how patient services would be administered and hence could cause the tiredness and put the safety of the patient in jeopardy (Armstrong & Laschinger, 2006).
While handling special care patients like old adults and patients with disabilities, special understanding of their requirements is vital. As such, nurses are empowered to offer satisfactory form of care to them which will require utmost available resources from the hospital. This calls for nurses to be given mandate to utilize these resources with restrictions whatsoever (Friedman, 2009). With fewer resources and inability to advance, many nurses have been engulfed with physical and mental stress with others even ending up leaving their duties. As a responsibility and expectations to satisfy the patient, nurses’ burnout, emotional exhaustion and incompetence level (missed shifts) has been evidenced. This calls for nurse management who will ensure that nurses are provided with adequate resources to take of the sick patients. For instance, the nurses in the emergency units should be allowed to freely access equipments, medications and other materials required. This will reduce the use of relying on the often cumbersome process with pharmacy.
Shared governance is an integral part of empowering nurses so as to exercise their full mandate in offering health care to patients. They are involved in the general decision making process of how operations are run in the health facilities and therefore create an improved communication channel between nurses and the management of the health facilities and hospitals. These results in the excellence of their practices as depicted by satisfied patients. However, in the real world with vari...