Abstract
•Jordanian nurses suffer from a high rate of injuries and illnesses in their daily duties.•Sometimes studies have termed safety compliance and safety participation as safety behaviors and at other times have termed them as safety performance.•Psychological empowerment among intensive care units’ nurses is related to their safety compliance and safety participation.•Nurses perception of management commitment to safety can explain the relationship between psychological empowerment and safety performance.
Occupational accidents are substantial, particularly among hospitals’ healthcare providers such as nurses who deliver healthcare services directly to patients. Thus, improving safety performance via safety compliance and participation is required.
This study investigates the relationship between psychological empowerment as a non-safety antecedent with safety compliance as well as safety participation. Likewise, the study explores the role of nurses’ perceptions toward management commitment to safety as a mediator in these relationships.
A personally distributed survey was employed, and the respondents comprised 285 intensive care unit nurses at eight Jordanian hospitals who were randomly selected by cluster sampling, with a 52% response rate. Partial Least Squares (PLS) was employed to establish the validity and reliability of the study model and to examine the study hypotheses.
The results confirmed that psychological empowerment has a significant and positive influence on both dimensions of safety performance among nurses. Moreover, perceived management commitment to safety mediates these relationships.
The psychological empowerment of nurses can enhance their compliance and participation in safety measures. This paper adds to the current safety literature and nursing practices by demonstrating the effect of psychological empowerment on safety performance. Perceived management commitment to safety as a mediator provides insights for leaders. Practically speaking, health policy makers and safety managers (i.e., infection control officers) should keep their nurses empowered psychologically and be aware of their real commitment to safety to enhance workplace safety of nurses.