Perceiving Psychological Empowerment and Its Relationship to Clinical Competence and Professional Values among Nursing Intern Students

Background: Nursing is a profession requiring prolonged training and a formal qualification. Therefore, nurse interns are expected to display competent and skillful behaviors in alignment with their profession. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the relationships between psychological empowerment, clinical competence and professional value among nursing intern students. Research design: A cross-sectional descriptive design was utilized. Subjects: a sample of 289 nursing intern students affiliated with the government and private Hospitals during the academic year 2019/2020. Data were collected from June to Augustus. Tools: Self- administered questionnaire which consisted of four tools: Personal and job characteristics of the participants, psychological empowerment scale, clinical competence scale and professional value scale. Results: Two-third of nursing intern students perceived psychological empowerment as a good level in both training hospitals and the total mean score of the psychological empowerment variable was 42.69±3.045 The highest mean scores for the "Meaning" dimension and "Impact" dimension was the lowest mean score of all psychological empowerment dimensions. More than half of the nursing intern students had a high level of total clinical competency in both training hospitals. The highest mean score of clinical competence was related to work role while the lowest mean score was related to ensuring quality subscale. The highest percent of the studied nursing intern students had a good perception level toward total professional values in the Governmental hospital and Private hospitals and the total mean score was (89.98±8.567), (94.31±6.939) respectively. Conclusions: There was a statistically significant positive correlation between the total psychological empowerment score, clinical competence, and professional values scores among nursing intern students. Recommendations: It is recommended to nursing colleges should provide a good relationship between faculty and training hospital staff and preparation of nursing intern students through a well-organized program, especially the part of the clinical experience. And continuous supervision and appraisal interviews should be conducted with nursing intern students through daily, weekly discussions and at the end of clinical experience by her immediate supervisor to discuss her performance to learn more, develop her knowledge and skills.