Participatory management effects on nurses' organizational support and moral distress.

RESEARCH QUESTION/AIM/OBJECTIVES: Providing care for hospitalized children causes moral distress to nurses. Employee participation in discovering and solving the everyday problems of the workplace is one of the ways to hear the voices of nurses. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of participatory management programs on perceived organizational support and moral distress in pediatric nurses.

RESEARCH DESIGN

A quasi-experimental study.

PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT

The present study was conducted on 114 pediatric nurses in Iran. Data were collected using the Perceived Organizational Support Scale and the Moral Distress Scale of nurses. The intervention included implementing a participatory management program in three treatment departments that were randomly selected and it lasted 4 months. Participatory management was at the level of problem-solving with a focus on investigating, solving, and correcting issues and problems of work shifts and departments concerning the physical environment, equipment of the department, improvement of work processes, and team cooperation. In the control group, ordinary organizational approaches to problem-solving were used.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Mashhad School of Nursing and Midwifery. Informed consent was obtained from the study participants.

FINDINGS/RESULTS: Based on the results, both groups were homogenous before the intervention in terms of moral distress and perceived organizational support. The results showed that the moral distress mean scores in the intervention group decreased from 1.45 (0.52) to 1.03 (0.37) after the intervention. Also, the score of the perceived organizational support was 2.12 (1.2) increased after the intervention to 2.68 (1.10) in the intervention group.

CONCLUSIONS

It was found that the participation of nurses in the problem-solving process to solve daily workplace issues can be effective in increasing their perceived organizational support and reducing their moral distress.