The Impact of Nurse Empowerment on Their Intent-to-Stay: A Case in Private Medical Health Care.

This case report explores the impact of work empowerment among the nursing staff in a private medical health care institution in the state of Kedah, West Malaysia.. The main
purpose of the study was to apply the Kanter's theory of structural empowerment with the utilization of measuring instrument modified by Chandler (1986) and Laschinger(1996,
1999,2001) to examine the influence of nurses' work empowerment towards their intent-to-stay in this particular organization. The whole population census of 103 nurses participated in the study using cross-sectional techniques and interview method. A excellent response rate of 100% is achieved. Survey measures administered comprise few instruments: Organizational Description Opinionnaires (ODO) which measure nurses' perceptions of their manager's power; Conditions for Work Effectiveness Questionnaires
(CWEQ) aim to measure overall work empowerment, which encompass nurses' perceptions of their access to the four work empowerment structures: opportunity, information, support, and resources; Job Activities Scale(JAS) measures the formal or position power; the Organizational Relationships Scale (ORS), measures informal power and Intent-to-stay (ITS) index, measures nurses' intention to remain with the organization. Findings revealed that work empowerment will not vary regardless of the nurses' job status. Male and female ethnicity differ significantly (p<0.05) in term of work empowerment. However there are no significant differences between nurse managers and staff nurses in term of their intent-to-stay. Again, in comparison among nurses in three different job levels, i.e, nurse manager, staff nurse and auxiliary nurse also did not exist any differences in their intent-to-stay. The correlation analysis found the existences of significant positive relationship between: i) nurses' intent-to-stay and their work empowerment; ii) nurses' intent-to-stay and their perceptions of formal power within the work environment; iii) nurses' intent-to-stay and their perceptions of informal power within the work environment; iv) nurses' work empowerment and their perceived power
towards their manager within the work environment. The results also substantiated that the job status/ levels and work empowerment did significantly predict 31% of the
variance in nurses' intent-to-stay. However work empowerment is a better predictor than job status. The findings suggest further investigation in public health care institution for comparative purposes to elicit and explicate a lucid picture of nursing issues in empowerment and turnover.
Keywords: "empowerment"; "intent-to-stay"; "turnover" & "healthcare"