Control Over Practice and the Innovating Process in Hospital Nursing Departments.

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between control over practice and the innovating process in hospital nursing departments. Data analyzed in the study were a subset of those collected for a larger investigation of research utilization in nursing. The subjects were Registered Nurses who worked on, or with, selected medical-surgical units in 30 Michigan hospitals. A stratified probability procedure was used to draw the hospital sites. For the dissertation, the original sample was divided into two cohorts. The first cohort consisted of 720 individual respondents surveyed in 16 hospitals during 1977, and the second cohort consisted of 684 individuals surveyed in 14 hospitals during 1978. The analysis proceeded as follows: (a) an initial exploration of the data was conducted using data from the first cohort, (b) specific hypotheses were developed from this data, and (c) these hypotheses were tested subsequently using data from the second cohort. Of the eight hypotheses derived from the exploratory analysis, three received support in the confirmatory phase. First, it was found that greater than 50% of the control over nursing practice was perceived by both administrators and staff nurses to come from within nursing service departments. Second, in strong or influential nursing departments, nursing administrators were found to have greater responsibility for innovating than in less influential departments. Third, a positive relationship between personal control over practice and responsibility for innovating was found for staff nurses. Implications for the profession, for nursing administrators, and for nursing education are presented.PhDNursingUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158835/1/8215004.pd