Structural empowerment, job stress and burnout of nurses in China

Purpose: To investigate the status of structural empowerment, job stress and burnout in China, and to explore the relationships among them. Methods: The questionnaires of CWEQ-II, job stressors and MBI were used to investigate 1002 nurses working at tertiary-level hospitals. Results: The average score of CWEQ-II was 2.23 +/- 0.59. The score of EE of MBI was 29.75 +/- 13.94, PA was 27.40 +/- 11.21, both of them showed a high level of exhaustion, DP was 8.07 +/- 5.82 and showed a middle level of exhaustion. The findings showed that workload and time pressure were the most frequently encountered job stress among staff nurses, the score was 3.23 +/- 0.95; There was a significantly correlation among structural empowerment, job stressors and the level of burnout(p < 0.05). Hierarchical regression analysis showed that structural empowerment had significant influence on the every factors of job stressors (p < 0.05) and burnout, job stressors had significant influence on the every factors of burnout (p < 0.05). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed a good fit to the data based on various fit indices (chi(2)/df = 2.29, GFI = 0.945, CFI = 0.965, IFI = 0.966, RMSEA = 0.061). Staff nurses felt that structural empowerment in their workplace resulted in lower levels of job stress which in turn strongly influenced Burnout. Conclusions: These results provide initial support for an expanded model of structural empowerment, and offer a broader understanding of the empowerment process. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.