Philip Burnard describes the use of a workshop setting to help nurses look at assertiveness in everyday practice. Participants come to realise that there is no standard set of assertiveness skills which can be employed on every occasion, but that differing circumstances require differing responses.
It is important that nurses continue to develop assertiveness skills to enable them to cope better with colleagues from other disciplines, to help them break bad news to relatives and patients and to allow them to look after themselves. Nursing Standard. Alternatively, you can purchase access to this article for the next seven days.
Sue Hodgetts is chief executive of the Institute for Healthcare Management and has extensive experience in education and training within and outside the NHS. Sign in or Register a new account to join the discussion.
You are here: Nurse managers. Being assertive benefits everyone. Susan Hodgetts. Despite the importance of assertiveness to sound nursing practice and quality care delivery, previous studies show that nurses have limited assertiveness.
Therefore, the present study was designed and undertaken to evaluate assertive behaviors among nurses in Qaen, an eastern city in Iran. This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted on all nurses, auxiliary nurses, and anesthesia and operating room technicians who were working at Shoahday-e Qaen hospital, Qaen, Iran in summer The participants were recruited through the census method.
Inclusion criteria were a hospital work experience of one year or more and an associate or higher degree in nursing, anesthesia, or operating room, or an auxiliary nursing diploma. Exclusion criterion was voluntary withdrawal from the study. A demographic questionnaire and the Gambrill-Richey assertion inventory 14 , 15 were employed for data collection. The items of the demographic questionnaire were age, gender, nursing degree, marital status, work experience, and organizational position.
The Assertion Inventory contained 40 items. The participants were asked to answer the inventory in two rounds.
The total scores of the first and the second rounds represented the two dimensions of assertiveness, namely discomfort and response probability. The scores of these two dimensions were used to determine whether a respondent was indifferent, unassertive, anxious performer, or assertive Table 1. An earlier study on 40 guidance-school female students reported that the day test-retest correlation coefficients of the discomfort and the response probability dimensions of the assertion inventory were 0.
Participants were informed about the study aim and the confidential handling of their information. The Chi-square test was performed at a significance level of less than 0.
From participants, completely filled out and returned their questionnaires. Most participants were female 95 cases, As Table 2 shows, The findings showed that most participants had limited assertiveness Our findings also indicated that only Similarly, two earlier studies reported that nurses had limited assertiveness 10 , We also found that These values in a previous study were That study also reported that greater assertiveness was associated with lower likelihood of suffering from violence Moreover, a study on Iranian nursing and midwifery students found that Another study also showed limited assertiveness among nursing students Our findings also indicated no significant difference between male and female participants respecting their assertiveness score, though female participants obtained slightly higher assertiveness scores than their male counterparts.
This finding may be attributable to the greater number of females in the present study In line with our findings, several earlier studies reported no significant relationship between gender and assertiveness 22 - However, a study showed greater assertiveness among female nursing and midwifery students 6 , while another study reported significantly greater assertiveness among male students These discrepancies among studies can be due to the differences in their samples, designs, and data collection instruments.
Moreover, gender socialization can be an explanation for the difference between men and women in terms of their assertiveness. In addition, men are engaged in social activities more than women are and hence, they are usually more assertive while women are more passive However, the insignificant relationship between gender and assertiveness in the present study may be due to the obedience of both male and female nurses to physicians.
We also found that single participants were relatively more assertive than their married counterparts were, even though the difference was not statistically significant.
The greater assertiveness of single individuals may be attributable to their lower familial commitment and lower concern over employment loss. Similarly, an earlier study found that single midwives were more assertive than their married counterparts were This study concludes that the hospital-nursing staff has limited assertiveness.
Therefore, nursing managers need to implement educational programs in order to promote their assertiveness and self-confidence and thereby, improve care quality and patient satisfaction. Given the potential effects of the immediate sociocultural context on assertiveness, the present study can be replicated in other contexts and on larger samples of hospital staff.
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