Psychological Empowerment as a Predictor of Nurses' Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Professional Identity

To examine the mediating role of professional identity in the relationship between psychological empowerment and job satisfaction among nurses.

Nurses play a fundamental role in patient care while fulfilling professional responsibilities, and their psychological empowerment may influence both professional identity and job satisfaction.

This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 237 nurses selected from a population of 600 nurses working at a university hospital between February and May 2025. In the analysis of the data, Pearson correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis were used. To test the mediating effect, Hayes' Process Macro (Model 4) with 5000 bootstrap resamples and a 95% confidence interval was employed.

Psychological empowerment accounted for 19.2% of the variance in job satisfaction and 29% in professional identity. Professional identity explained 37.4% of the variance in job satisfaction, while the combination of psychological empowerment and professional identity explained 39.4%. Furthermore, professional identity significantly mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and job satisfaction, with an effect coefficient of 0.286 (95% CI [0.203, 0.371]), as supported by bootstrapping results, indicating a meaningful mediation effect.

These results suggest that enhancing nurses' psychological empowerment can strengthen their professional identity, thereby improving job satisfaction.

The study demonstrated that professional identity mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and job satisfaction among nurses. Strengthening nurses' psychological empowerment may enhance professional identity, which in turn leads to increased job satisfaction.

Enhancing nurses' psychological empowerment may strengthen their professional identity and increase job satisfaction.

Nurse managers should develop strategies to promote psychological empowerment and professional identity to improve nurses' job satisfaction.