Nurses and Empowerment: Empowering and Being Empowered

I also believe that nursing is about empowering patients through teaching and positive reinforcement, giving them the autonomy to direct their own recovery or health maintenance. In doing so I believe that we are respecting their individuality and dignity.

The purpose of this paper is to create a concept analysis and identify a nursing concept that is within a nursing theory. A concept analysis is a process where concepts and their characteristics are researched and clarified. The eight steps on conducting a concept analysis include selection of a concept used in a nursing theory, identification of the aims or purposes of the analysis, identification of possible use of the selected concept, determination of defining attributes, identification of model cases, identification of antecedents and consequences, and lastly definition of empirical referents (Walker & Avant, 2011). The nursing concept selected for this paper is “empowerment” within the nursing profession. The nursing theory from which the empowerment concept was obtained is Kanter’s Theory on Structural Empowerment. In order to empower someone, an individual needs the tools and resources to feel powered. According to Laschinger, Gilbert, Smith, & Leslie (2010), Kanter defines power as the ability to mobilize information, resources and support to get things done in an organization. The role of management is to provide employees with power tools that empower them to maximize their ability to accomplish their work in a meaningful way. Kanter goes on to describe two primary empowerment structures in organizations, first being the structure of opportunity and second the structure of power. The structure of opportunity relates to job conditions that provide

Nursing is defined as the promotion, protection and the prevention of illness and Injury, the treatment of a patient’s disease or diseases, the patient’s response to a disease, as well as one big thing that nurses are known for, and that is being a patient’s advocate nursing has been one of the fastest growing fields since the 1990’s (Mueller et al.,2012). Advocacy is defined as an action in which a person speaks out, argues a cause, supports and defends on the behalf of others. I believe that the role of being a patient advocate is one of the most important things a nurse can do because there are many patients that cannot speak on their behalf, I believe that it is up to the nurses to be those patients as well as all patient’s voices (Mueller et al., 2012).

“Nursing encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings. Nursing includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people. Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are also key nursing roles” (ICN 2010)

Empowering the nursing team allows them to feel important and become vested in the change process. Transformational leaders value employee contributions, promote quality work performance and job satisfaction (Utley, Anderson & Atwell, 2011). Empowering employees allows them to take responsibility and feel that they play an important role in accomplishing the set goal. This increases job enrichment and therefore affects job satisfaction. Another way to empower the nursing staff is to assist them in developing their own leadership skills. “Nurse managers should also consider developing junior staff’s leadership skills, particularly in situations where there are nursing shortages or where nurses are reluctant to undertake leadership roles. Leadership in nursing is critical to ensuring consistent standards across all aspects of care and building an environment for

This study will be done to fullfill requirements for completion of the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree at Regis University, Denver, CO. The following information is an overview of the project: Can Empowered Nurses Decrease CAUTI rates?

Introduction - “Empowerment” means you can boost someone’s confidence and promote choice among the service users. It is important to have empowerment in a care home as it can help the service users voice their opinion and make important issues known.

Empowerment of individuals is important when planning care as this is the way in which a health or social care worker will encourage an individual to make decisions and take control of their own life. Empowerment is a process that builds a person's self-esteem and confidence in their ability to make decisions. This can also be linked to promotion of

| Describe ways in which care workers can empower Individuals (P3)Explain why it is important to take individual circumstances into account when planning care that will empower an individual, using relevant example from health and social care (P4)Discuss the extent to which individual circumstances can be taken into account when planning care that will empower them, using relevant examples from health and social care (M2)Assess the potential difficulties in taking individual circumstances into account when planning care that will empower an individual, making suggestions for improvement (D2)

As healthcare professionals or “experts”, nurses can often, with the best of intentions, deprive clients of autonomy by monopolising their care, believing that we are acting in their best interests. In Thomas’ case we could identify his smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, low motivation and possible unresolved grief stemming from the death of his daughter as problems. However, the essence of the Health Belief Model is that of empowerment, we act as facilitators to support our clients in identifying areas they may wish to change (Kiger 2004). While still undoubtedly the experts, we do not use our knowledge to hold ourselves apart, but to act as facilitators and catalysts for changing to more positive health behaviours. Thomas’ perceptions of his problems may be very different to our own, or he may feel unable to change. So the issue for the practitioner becomes not, “how do we fix the problem?” but, “how do we assist our clients in identifying problem areas they may wish to change and empower them to make that change?” In order to see how this may be achieved, the author will now discuss the HBM as a framework to enable a nurse to assist clients in this manner.

Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.

Empowerment is when individuals are given greater control over decisions and actions that will affect their health. Empowerment is important when working in partnership within health and social care settings, as it can allow honest relationships to develop between service users and

Power as defined by Kelly & Crawford (2008) is the ability to achieve one’s goals by creating, acquiring and using resources to do so. Nurses over time - whether learned, cultural or related to gender-specific characteristics, have not embraced power (Kelly & Crawford, 2008). The public view of nurses as subordinates to physicians, simply “trained” to follow doctors’ orders, an overall lack of understanding as to the level of education and the kind of work nurses actually do (Sullivan, 2004) has lent to this perception. Sullivan (2004) writes about telling

The purpose of the study as stated in the abstract was to test Kanter’s theory by examining relationships among structural empowerment, leader-member exchange (LMX) quality and nurses’ participation in personal knowledge transfer activities. The article demonstrates utilization of Kanter’s theory of structural empowerment will enhance morale within the work

As an advanced practice nurse, I am being given an opportunity to use power to assist change in people’s lives. It is essential I understand the definition of power and how to utilize it in my everyday practice. I can incorporate and use the Power as Knowing Participation in Change Theory that was developed by Barrett in both my personal and professional life. Barrett defines power as “the capacity to participate knowingly to change” (Smith & Parker, 2015, p. 497). Within the theory of power, there are four distinct dimensions of power that were developed to help patients understand the importance of making their own health care decisions.