Evaluation of the Relationships Between Nurses' Forgiveness, Compassion and Professional Commitment

Background:Compassion improves mental health as well as enhancing nurses' work performance. Compassion and forgiveness can help nurses to achieve optimal health care outcomes by playing a role in resolving conflicts between their patients and other health care team. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between nurses' forgiveness, compassion and professional commitment. Methods:This cross-sectional study was carried out between March-June 2019. The universe of the study comprises a total of 654 nurses working at a university hospital in Turkey, and the sample constitutes 243 nurses with 95% confidence interval and 5% margin of error. The data of the study was collected from 201 nurses (82.71%) who were selected by simple random sampling method. Compassion Scale, Forgiveness Scale, and Nursing Professional Commitment Scale were used. One-way Anova test, t-test, Pearson correlation test and Structural Equation Model (SEM) were used to analyze the data statistically. Results:In the study group, 77.1% (n=155) were female and the mean age was 29.28±7.25 (min.19.00;max.55.00) years. The forgiveness levels were lower among the nurses whose monthly income of households exceeds their expenses, who working more than 40 hours per week on average, who working in the current unit out of their own will. The compassion levels were lower among the nurses whose monthly income of households more than their expenses, who participated rarely in post-graduate trainings to improve their professional knowledge and skills. The professional commitments were lower among the nurses who working in internal medical sciences, who preferred nursing out of their own will, who were not satisfied with the working conditions, who never participated in post-graduate trainings to improve their professional knowledge and skills (p<.05 per each). The nurses' compassion levels were found to increase with the increasing their forgiveness levels and professional commitment levels. As the nurses' compassion levels increase, their levels of forgiveness of themselves decrease and their levels of forgiveness of others increase. As the nurses' compassion levels increase, their belief in goals and values, their willingness to pursue their professional membership and effort also increase. According to SEM, the effect of nurses' compassion levels on forgiveness levels (predictive power) was -.49 and the effect on their professional commitment was .82. The effect of nurses' forgiveness levels on their professional commitment (β=.30; p>.05) was not significant. The nurses' compassion levels were explained 24% of the variance in their forgiveness levels. The nurses' compassion and forgiveness levels together were explained 53% of the variance in their professional commitment levels. The level of professional commitment described 71% of the variance in devotion to the goals and values, 34% of the variance in desire to effort, and 20% of the variance in maintaining to professional membership.