Empowering versus enabling in academia

The literature endorses empowered nurses as essential to changing not only the nursing profession but also the current health care system. Nurse educators have embraced the concept of empowering students. However, faculty frequently enable students rather than empower them in both clinical and classroom settings. This article describes the difference between enabling and empowering. Collegiality, communication, accountability, and autonomy are components of a model used to compare empowering versus enabling in the academic setting. Nurse educators will become aware of behaviors that sabotage the empowerment of students. Strategies designed to facilitate students' development of empowering behaviors will be provided throughout the article.