Relationship between a University Hospital Nurses’ Structural Empowerment and Quality of Nursing Work Life: Mediating Effect of Psychological Empowerment

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to verify the mediating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between structural empowerment and quality of nursing work life.Methods: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study. 134 clinical nurses were participated and completed a structured questionnaire. Data were collected from December 28, 2020, to January 6, 2021 at a university hospital in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Data were analyzed using multiple regression and a simple mediation model applying the PROCESS macro with 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval (5,000 bootstrap resampling).Results: Quality of nursing work life showed statistically significant differences by gender, perceived health condition, satisfaction of income, and current work unit. Quality of nursing work life had statistically significant positive correlation with structural empowerment, and psychological empowerment. After controlling general characteristics, psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between structural empowerment and quality of nursing work life.Conclusions: In this study, psychological empowerment was shown to partially mediate between structural empowerment and quality of nursing work life. Therefore, further research is needed to develop and apply programs that can improve structural and psychological empowerment. It also requires organizational and institutional efforts to increase psychological empowerment by increasing access to structural empowerment.