The influence of staff nurses' perceptions of organizational culture on inpatient satisfaction with nursing care.

Abstract

The aims of this project were to investigate the influence of staff nurses' perceptions of organizational culture factors and job satisfaction on two clinical indicators of nursing care and general inpatient satisfaction with hospital nursing care. Organizational culture factors include accomplishment, affiliation, recognition and strength of culture. The two clinical indicators of nursing care examined are 'inpatients' perceptions of satisfaction with management of pain and satisfaction with preparation for home care and follow-up. A conceptual model was developed and one proposition and three hypotheses were tested. The proposition assumed that there are differences in the group means across nursing units on the nurses' measures and inpatients' measures. Three direct linkages between organizational culture factors and job satisfaction, job satisfaction and the two clinical indicators of nursing care, and the two clinical indicators of nursing care and general inpatient satisfaction with nursing care, were tested. This project used a secondary analysis research design utilizing data from the Michigan Nursing Role Professionalization Project (Redman & Ketefian, 1995). The subjects were staff nurses (n = 129) and patients (n = 223) who were sampled from 18 inpatient care units in an academic medical center. Data came from two separate questionnaires--the Nurse Assessment Survey scales (Braskamp & Maehr, 1985) and the Nursing Services Inpatient Satisfaction Survey scales (Redman, Dufek, Finch, Jones, Ketefian, Robinson, & Spengler, 1996). Multiple regression, one-way ANOVA tests and cluster analyses were used to test the proposition and three hypotheses. The analyses revealed three major findings at an alpha value set at.05: (1) the staff nurses' perceptions of organizational culture factors predict their job satisfaction; (2) the units' mean scores of staff nurses' job satisfaction marginally predict these units' mean scores of inpatients' satisfaction with information on home care and follow-up (p =.11), but the units' mean scores of staff nurses' job satisfaction do not predict the inpatients' satisfaction with management of pain and discomfort (p =.44); and (3) the inpatients' satisfaction with management of pain and discomfort and satisfaction with information about home care and follow-up predict their general inpatient satisfaction with nursing care.