Organizational Climate in Greek Public Sector Intensive Care Units: How Supportive is for Nurses?

Introduction: Organizational climate refers to a set of long lasting characteristics of a unit’s internal environment, which can be described in terms of values set by the employees. Few studies have focused on the organizational climate’s dimensions in Intensive Care Units (ICU). Aim: To assess critical care nurses’ perceptions on organizational climate in Greek public hospitals’ ICUs. Material and Method: Descriptive cross sectional study of correlation comparison in a convenience sample of critical care nurses (n=199) in Greek public hospitals. An 8-item questionnaire with demographic, professional and working characteristics was used, as well as the Nurse Work Index-Revised-Greek Edition. Non-parametric tests were performed to ascertain the statistical significance of the observed score differences and correlation coefficients were computed to indicate correlations between variables. Results: Total score on organizational climate in Greek public sector ICUs was below midpoint for all respondents as a group (2.34±0.43), indicating that Greek ICUs are not supportive work environments in the hospitals studied. Nursing professional characteristics (1.96±0.57), nurse-physician collaboration and status of Nursing in hospitals (2.29±0.54), as well as professional autonomy (2.19±0.61) had a mean score below the neutral midpoint of 2.5, while nursing leadership in ICU (2.70±0.66) and relationships with other staff (3.01±0.56) were evaluated as the most positive characteristics of ICU environment. The size of an ICU is a determinant of its organizational climate (tau_b=–0.310, p<0.001). Conclusions: Greek nurses’ shared experiences form their perceptions that ICU working environments are not supportive in terms of nursing professional development and recognition.

Category: Volume 55, N 2
Hits: 2586 Hits
Created Date: 15-06-2016
Authors: Vassiliki Karra , Maria Kalafati , Dimitrios Xythalis , Georgios Alexias