Nursing tasks and practice environment for nursing work perceived by nurses working on comprehensive wards versus general wards

Abstract

Purpose: This study was performed to measure the level of nursing tasks and practice environment of nursing work (PENW) perceived by nurses working on comprehensive wards or general wards, and to investigate the relationship between these two variables. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional survey. Participants were 97 nurses working on comprehensive or general wards of one general hospital in Gyeonggido, Korea. Data were collected from October 17 to 21, 2016 using the structured questionnaires and analyzed with SPSS/PC ver 18.0 programs. Results: The scores for nursing tasks (performance, importance, and knowledge) perceived by nurses working on comprehensive wards were higher than nurses on general wards. The score for PENW perceived by nurses working on comprehensive wards was significantly higher than that of nurses on general wards. For comprehensive ward nurses, there was a relationship between nursing tasks and PENW, but no relationship was found for general ward nurses. Conclusion: This findings show that nurses working on comprehensive wards evaluate nursing tasks and PENW higher than nurses working on general wards indicating that nursing managers should work to raise the perception of general ward nursing tasks and PENW.