Available online 29 June 2023, 151700

Author links open overlay panel, , , , AbstractObjective

The current study focuses on organizational culture as a determinant of well-being among nurses.

Background

Nurse well-being is an increasing concern for organizational operations and patient care quality. There are limited studies on the aspects of organizational culture, such as leadership and perception of organizational mission, that relate to clinician well-being.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey study was conducted among nurses in a U.S. hospital. Measures were professional quality of life, organizational culture, and authentic leadership. Statistical methods were used to analyze findings.

Results

Among the nurses (N = 147), after controlling for significant demographic factors, organizational culture and authentic leadership had significant correlations with burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion satisfaction. In multivariate analyses, organizational culture was a significant predictor for burnout and compassion satisfaction.

Conclusion

This study provides empirical evidence that organizational behavior is important to staff well-being. Organizations that act with fidelity to their missions of caring and quality patient care are more likely to have nursing staff that are emotionally healthy in the workplace.

Section snippetsBackground

Clinician well-being is a health systems research issue because of its indirect and direct effects on health care operations and patient care outcomes (Dyrbye et al., 2017). Issues related to well-being, including depression, anger, and stress, impact a person's ability to provide compassionate, person-centered care (Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being and Resilience & National Academy of Medicine, 2022). As a human caring science, issues to well-being are a particular concern for

Aims & design

The current study seeks to explore organizational contributors to well-being. This study focuses on organizational factors (authentic leadership and organizational behavior/mission congruence) as they are less examined than individual traits in the literature. The specific aims are 1) to measure authentic leadership, perceived congruence of organizational behavior and mission, and professional quality of life (compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress), 2) to determine

Demographics

Individual and workplace characteristics pertinent to nursing workforce studies and conceptually linked to well-being were collected. The demographic factors were selected to best describe the sample and compare it to the registered nurse workforce in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, 2010). Variables collected were included age (collected as a continuous variable) and race/ethnicity, gender, role in the hospital, and years of

Results

There were 147 responses to the survey with complete data. Of these respondents, a majority were female (n = 121, 82 %), had >10 years of experience (n = 90, 61 %), and were in a direct care role (n = 111, 75 %). There was a fair amount of racial diversity, with 43 % (n = 64) of the sample reporting Asian race. The mean age was 43 years (SD 10.6). See Table 1.

On the ALQ, the overall mean was 56.8 (SD = 18.67), indicating a moderate-high level of frequency of authentic leadership

Discussion

This study provides continued evidence of the importance of the overall work environment to nurse well-being. Nurses in this study who perceived their organization's behaviors, such as decisions, policies, or communications, matched the hospital's mission were less likely to report burnout and more likely to report being satisfied with the caring work they do. This finding appears consistent with the literature stating a wholesome work environment is beneficial to nurses' health and wellness (

Limitations

This study has limitations. As a cross-sectional study, findings do not represent causal or temporal relationships. Generalizability to the whole population of nurses is limited due to study design, response rate, and sample size. The study relies on self-report instruments, which represent the potential for recall or response bias. Though correlation and multiple regression findings were present, the slopes (i.e., r) and effect sizes were small, limiting the potency of the findings. However,

Conclusion

Organizations seeking solutions to the sequelae of clinician burnout and turnover should consider strategies to improve organizational culture. The findings from this study indicate that when employees (e.g., clinicians) experience a workplace where they can sense the connection to the overall mission have better workplace well-being. This might be especially valid among clinicians working in a faith-based hospital, where the organizational mission is linked with the doctrine of love,

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Katherine Brewer (Conceptualization; Methodology; Formal analysis; Validation, Roles/Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing), Martha Dodson (Funding acquisition; Investigation, Roles/Writing – original draft), Haydee Ziegler (Conceptualization; Writing – review & editing), Sarin Kurdian (Project administration, Roles/Writing – original draft), Jinhee Nguyen (Conceptualization; Resources; Supervision, Writing – review & editing).

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. No funding was received for this study.

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