Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Catherine Garner

Abstract

Nurse leaders’ creation of a culture of caring for their nursing staff has been shown to improve nurses’ job satisfaction and retention, and ultimately patient outcomes. At the project site, there was a perceived gap in nursing leadership practice in integrating a culture of caring into leadership and management practices. Although staff and leadership identified similar caring behaviors, staff members did not perceive nursing leadership as caring, which affected the former’s job satisfaction. The purpose of this education project was to provide site leaders with information on specific caring behaviors and how to model these behaviors with staff using Watson’s caring science theory and the concepts of organizational theory. The guiding practice-focused question asked if a continuing education program would increase nursing leaders’ knowledge about the application of Watson’s caring science core concepts and their intent to integrate these concepts into daily leadership practices. A one-hour interactive, educational, virtual workshop was presented to six nurse leaders at the site. A trend analysis of pre- and posttest survey responses using descriptive statistics suggested that the workshop was effective in increasing participants’ knowledge. Ratings based on a 5-point Likert scale increased on all seven items from the pretest (M = 3) to the posttest (M = 4.6) with a mean positive increase of 1.6 in scores. The findings merit further investigation with a larger group of nursing leaders. This leadership intervention may foster an organizational culture of caring where increased nurse job satisfaction leads to increased nurse caring behaviors towards coworkers and patients, thus promoting positive social change.

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