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Developing an instrument to assess empowering nurse leader communication behaviours
Susan G Hopkinson1, Dale Glaser2, Cheryl Napier3
1Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Aim:
The overall purpose of the study was to develop an instrument to assess empowering nurse leader communication behaviours.
Background:
Effective communication by nurse leaders promotes empowerment, yet communication assessments are often broad in nature without specifying precise behaviours.
Methods:
An instrument development process was used to identify empowering nurse leader communication behaviours. Nurses working in United States military health care facilities (n = 240) provided responses to 47 pilot items, along with a 12-item psychological empowerment instrument to test for concurrent criterion validity.
Results:
After review of item performance, 12 items were deleted. An exploratory factor analysis supported either a 2- or 3-factor model, with confirmatory factor analyses conducted to validate the underlying latent variables of empowering and limiting behaviours. The final nurse leader communication assessment consists of 2 factors consisting of 20 positive items (empowering subscale) and 15 negative items (limiting subscale).
Conclusion:
The final 2-factor assessment supports the theoretical premise of the empowering and limiting behaviours. Further testing may provide further dimensional clarity.
Implications For Nursing Management:
Use of the assessment can provide a basis for the development of training for individual nurse leaders or for facility nurse leaders as a collective.
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