Empowered nurses? Nurses in Norway and the USA compared

This comparative study investigated to what degree nurses from two major university hospitals, one in the USA and one in Norway, experienced empowerment. Nurses' experiences of power were studied, as operationalized by Laschinger in her model and instruments. Laschinger's model is based on Kanter's theory of structural determinants of behaviour in organizations. The Norwegian sample consisted of 590 nurses with a response rate of 70.5%; the North American sample consisted of 135 nurses with a response rate of 55%. The results showed both similarities and differences. Formal power for both samples explained 51% of the variance of the overall empowerment, while informal and formal power explained 62%. The Norwegian nurses experienced slightly more informal power while the USA nurses experienced more formal power. There were significant differences, in each hospital, in items within the theoretical constructs, when cross-tabulated by demographic variables. Leadership position was the demographic variable that most clearly differentiated in both hospital samples, with more power for the leaders. The small differences between nurses from two hospitals in two different countries in developed parts of the world raises some questions. The importance, or lack of importance, of cultural and organizational differences might be one area for further exploration. Overall, the methodology is valuable for further testing of nurse empowerment in different settings, as well as in change and implementation studies.