| Job dissatisfaction is linked to negative patient outcomes such as increased medical errors, hospital-acquired infections, and care omissions. While the literature indicates that nurses are more satisfied with the work environment and job when there are trusting relationships between leaders and nurses, it is not known if staff nurse perceptions of their manager's support behaviors, the work environment, and the job in general are positively affected by changing the nurse managers' behaviors to a relationship-oriented style. The project question was: Do relationship-oriented behaviors positively affect staff nurse perceptions of the manager's supervisory support behaviors, the work environment, and the job in general? Roy's adaptation model was used as the conceptual framework for this project. Pediatric medical/surgical, neonatal intensive care, and emergency department staff nurses (N = 186) were surveyed before and after the nurse managers were instructed to display relationship-oriented behaviors. Descriptive statistics were used to compare the nurse survey data from both intervals. The cohort mean scores decreased after the intervention. An independent samples t-test did not suggest statistical significance between the mean score changes from the two intervals. Most of the nurses' perceptions were "positive" or "very positive" for both survey intervals. However, manager support, appreciation, respect, keeping staff informed, and coworker behaviors were perceived less positively. Patient outcomes are indicators of care quality; therefore, healthcare leaders should actively seek to understand job dissatisfaction and aggressively develop plans for addressing any issues. |
