Nurses' perceptions about health sector privatization in Turkey

The aim of this study is to identify the perceptions of the nurses about the privatization implementation, as it pertains to privatization, health services privatization and the impact of privatization on nursing in Turkey.

Turkey is taking important steps in health services privatization but the related choices made in political arena are not shared with the employees of the health institutions where the privatization implementations are to take place.

The study was conducted among nurses who are working for the state health institutions and the members of professional organizations of healthcare workers, which are operating in Istanbul in Turkey. Data were collected via Nurses' Privatization Perception Scale in 2009 and were analysed using mean calculations, analysis of variance, Mann-Whitney U-test, t-test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Cronbach's alpha analyses.

Nurses' perceptions of privatization in general, health services privatization and the impact of privatization on nursing were found to be negative in all of the three sub-domains of the scale, as well as their perceptions of privatization implementations measured throughout the scale. The conducted comparisons showed that nurses' perceptions of the privatization implementations varied in accordance with independent variables.

The privatization implementations put in place in health services are perceived negatively by nurses. Policy makers in relevant fields are recommended to take the findings of this study into consideration.