Team inclusion and empowerment among nursing staff in long-term care

Team-based approaches to long-term care are increasingly part of the landscape in residential care facilities to improve staff performance and resident outcomes vis-à-vis empowering direct care staff. This study characterizes licensed and unlicensed nursing staffs' (N = 95) perceptions of inclusion as care team members by co-workers, supervisors and non-nursing clinicians. Further, we explored whether inclusion was correlated with heightened empowerment and its related dimensions using the Perception of Empowerment Instrument. Linear regression analyses revealed that levels of total empowerment, autonomy, responsibility and participation were associated with how included team members felt and by which members of the care team. These findings shed light on the potential importance of tailoring staff training to target specific team members to increase a sense of empowerment that aligns with the specific dimension(s) for a targeted group.