Structural and psychological empowerment and its influencing factors among nursing students in Oman.

BACKGROUND: This study explored the empowerment of nursing students to contribute to nursing education and recommend ways of increasing the engagement of nursing students in their training. The development of empowerment among nursing students leads to the maximum achievement of learning competencies and enables them to eventually become competent nurses. PURPOSE: This study examined the relationship between student nurses' characteristics, structural empowerment, and psychological empowerment. METHODS: A total of 185 nursing students were recruited through systematic sampling at Sultan Qaboos University, with a 92% response rate. Nursing students' level of psychological empowerment, in terms of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact, and their level of structural empowerment, in terms of access to opportunity, support, information, and resources were investigated using a self-designed questionnaire. RESULTS: The results showed that "access to support" was rated as the highest dimension by the students, followed by "access to information," "informal power," "access to opportunity," "access to resources," and "formal power." The global empowerment mean score was 3.64 (SD = 1.01), and the total structural empowerment score was 20.58 (SD = 3.62). The multivariate multiple regression analysis revealed that students' year level and involvement in school organizations had multivariate effects on the four dimensions of psychological empowerment. Students who were involved in school organizations had higher scores for the dimensions of "meaning," "competence," and "impact" than students who were not involved in any school organization. CONCLUSION: Power can be either developed or acquired, and its definition is expressed based on the achievement objective. Age is not a barrier, as it had little or no impact on nursing student experiences and no correlation with structural empowerment.

Towards a theory of communion-in-caring.

BACKGROUND: When nursing practice assumes a fix-it view model, it limits the growing capacity of practice. The theory of communion-in-caring emerged as a hopeful response to the call to offer a new vista. This theory unifies caring and the endless potential of human care. AIM: The aim of the paper is to describe the theory of communion-in-caring grounded in the human science philosophical perspective. Generated from a focused review of scholarly literature from classical caring theories in nursing to contemporary theoretical viewpoints in nursing published within the last decade guided by a creative theory-building process. This paper presents the theory of communion-in-caring with theoretical concepts and theoretical assumptions illuminating and supporting the contextual design and epistemological viewpoints of a caring-based theory of nursing. FINDINGS: Communion-in-caring is defined as a deliberate and a momentary occurrence of a nursing-caring encounter in which the nurse and person nursed, together, design and express unique practice processes toward affirming and celebrating being human in a unitary-transformative world. The theory further illuminates the foundational acts (i.e. love, hope, faith and charity) emulated into the embodied processes of communion-in-caring (i.e., caring-nurturing encounter, caring-nurturing inquiry and caring-nurturing capacity). Such cyclical, rhythmical and moving processes yield a nurtured caring environment with ethical standpoints, resonate the meaning-essence of caring through participation-in-being and offer culturally congruent care. CONCLUSION: This theory also realises that the discipline is overly influenced by technological advancements, digitalisation of care, the medicalisation of practice and a mechanistic lens of care. Thus, this theory calls for moral enrichment towards an identity that embodies participation-in-being, seeing self-in-others and communion-of-being.

Assessment of the quality of independent nursing practice in Indonesia based on total quality management indicators.

Background: The quality of management has become a problem and significant issue of the late decade in Indonesia's professional nursing practice. By implementing total quality management (TQM), the organization would identify a health organization system's performance to improve patient satisfaction and patient safety for independent nursing practice services. Objective: This study aimed to assess the quality of independent nursing practice in Indonesia based on TQM indicators. Methods: This study employed a sequential explanatory mixed methods design. Participants were 105 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of independent nursing practices who answered a TQM survey using The Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence (MBCfPE). The quantitative responses were analyzed using SmartPLS version 3.0. For qualitative data, selected six participants from total respondents were interviewed to explore the participants' understanding of TQM. All the responses were transcribed and uploaded using NVIVO ver. 11 for thematic analysis. Results: Leadership positively influenced strategic planning, customer attention, assessment analysis, and information management (focusing on personnel process management and efficiency) (p <0.001). In addition, process management indicated a positive influence on performance results (p <0.001). Interview transcriptions concentrated on the following themes that emerged, such as quality focus, service focus, human resource focus, performance result, leadership, service system design, strategic planning, and information system. Conclusion: TQM with the adaptation of MBCfPE criteria improves the organization's performance and serves as a strategic component in assessing and implementing sustainability change. The findings of this study can be used by CEOs of independent nursing practices for continuous improvement. In addition, the results serve as a basis for the ministry of health for accreditation to ensure the high quality of health care services.

Interprofessional Competency Framework for Health Service Managers in Oman: An e-Delphi Study.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to develop the required interprofessional competencies for health service managers in Oman. METHODS: Experts (n = 20) were selected based on their years' experience, position, fluency in English (both verbal and written), and who had completed higher education at either masters or doctorate levels in the relevant field. The data collection consisted of three rounds. Responses were collected and extracted from a web-based designed survey and subsequently analyzed. RESULTS: Experts agreed on the nine interprofessional domains and 41 competencies based on the inclusion of means (M) 3 4.4, an interquartile distribution (IQD) ≤ 1.25, and > 80.0% agreement. Findings revealed that there were levels of agreement (90.0% to 95.0%) among the experts in the nine interprofessional competency domains namely: resilience (M = 4.7, IQD = 0.40), research leverage (M = 4.7, IQD = 0.60), interprofessional ethics (M = 4.7, IQD = 0.80), quality improvement (M = 4.7, IQD = 0.80), information technology (M = 4.6, IQD = 0.80), leadership (M = 4.5, IQD = 1.00), management skills (M = 4.5, IQD = 0.80), communication (M = 4.5, IQD = 1.00), and team dynamics (M = 4.5, IQD = 1.00). CONCLUSIONS: The development of interprofessional competencies for health service managers is an impetus to strengthen the human resources capabilities, sustain a high level of quality patient outcomes, and to achieve the Ministry of Health's Health Vision 2050.