Empowerment and Optimum Use of Strengths Reduce Nurses' Time Pressure

To examine how empowerment, strength use, and their interactions with nursing skill level are related to nurse-perceived time pressure.

Nurse-perceived time pressure increases the chance of missed patient care and turnover intention. Time pressure may be reduced by nurses' placement in jobs that make use of their particular strengths (professional abilities, skills and expertise), rather than in jobs that fail to take advantage of these strengths. Empowerment (access to resources, information, support, and opportunities) may also contribute to a reduction time pressure. However, it is not known how strength use and empowerment impact time pressure and how such an impact differs among nurses, indicating a research gap.

This was a cross-sectional study.

The 501 nurse participants were approached at a medical center located in northern Taiwan. Complete survey responses were collected in November and December 2023. The sampling method was proportionate random sampling, which can help ensure sample representativeness. This study used scales of empowerment, strength use and time pressure.

Strength use is negatively related to time pressure. Nursing skill level strengthens the negative relationship between strength use and time pressure, while reducing the negative relationship between empowerment and time pressure.

This study uniquely highlights the pivotal role of nursing skill level in moderating the effects of empowerment and strength use.

This study impacts nurse managers by informing them how to devise policies regarding empowerment and task allocation to best utilise nurses' strengths.

It is suggested that nurse managers offer flexibility in their application of nurses' empowerment and strength use, as they may exert varied effects on different nurses.

STROBE statement was chosen as the EQUATOR checklist.

No patient or public contribution.