Abstract
M.Cur. (Nursing Management)
Empowerment is a process of increasing learner nurses’ access to independent thought and creating an environment to allow him/her to experience the autonomy of the effects of independent thoughts (Harris, 2005:49). In this study the term empowerment refers to participative decision-making, power-sharing and motivation of learner nurses by the operational manager in unit management. Third year learner nurses are placed or allocated in nursing units as part of their clinical training to acquire competencies in unit management. Through empowerment, operational managers need to support and guide learner nurses to attain competencies necessary to manage safe, competent, and ethical nursing care (Cho, Laschinger & Wong, 2006:46). The researcher had, during clinical accompaniment of third-year learner nurses, observed that they found it difficult to apply management principles and that learner nurses would complain that they were not empowered by operational managers to perform management activities. For the purpose of this quantitative, exploratory and descriptive study the objectives were to: Explore and describe empowerment of the third-year learner nurses in unit management by operational managers in an academic hospital. Develop recommendations for the operational managers to empower third-year learner nurses in unit management in an academic hospital. A simple random sample (N=200) was drawn from the accessible population of 400 third year learner nurses of a nursing college in the Johannesburg area. Structured self-administered questionnaires were distributed to participants. Descriptive, inferential statistical and factor analysis were performed. Validity and reliability principles were applied during the research process and ethical principles adhered to.