Graduating Nursing Students’ Empowerment and Related Factors: Comparative Study in Six European Countries
Open accessAbstract
New nurses are needed in healthcare. To meet the role expectations of a registered nurse, nursing students must feel empowered at graduation. However, there are only a few studies focusing on nursing students’ empowerment. This study aims to describe and analyze graduating nursing students’ level of empowerment in six European countries and potential related factors. A comparative and cross-sectional study was performed in the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain with graduating nursing students (n = 1746) using the Essential Elements of Nurse Empowerment scale. Potentially related factors included age, gender, a previous degree in health care, work experience in health care, graduation to first-choice profession, intention to leave the nursing profession, level of study achievements, satisfaction with the current nursing programme, clinical practicums, theoretical education, and generic competence measured with the Nurse Competence Scale. The data were analysed statistically. Graduating nursing students’ self-assessed level of empowerment was moderate, with statistical differences between countries. Those with high empowerment had no intention to leave the nursing profession, had a higher level of study achievements, and a higher self-assessed generic competence level. The results suggest that empowerment needs to be enhanced during nursing education. Further research is needed to understand the development of empowerment during the early years of a nursing career.
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Psychological distress negatively affects academic performance, clinical competence, patient safety, and quality of care.
“Psychological distress not only undermines mental and physical health but also negatively affects academic performance, clinical competence, patient safety, and the quality of care provided [3, 5–7].”
From Associations of psychological flexibility, mindfulness, and valued living with psychological distress among nursing students (2025) · cites this paper as [7]
The Introduction (page unavailable) mentions stress and burnout during nurses’ transition to practice, and separately says unsatisfactory workplace environments harm nursing quality and patient safety. It does not link psychological distress to academic performance, clinical competence, patient safety, or quality of care; searches for those links found no supporting passage. (LLM, conf=0.75)
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- Authors
- Visiers-Jiménez, L., Kuokkanen, L., Leino-Kilpi, H., Löyttyniemi, E., Turjamaa, R., Brugnolli, A., Gaspar, F., Nemcová, J., Palese, A., Rua, M., Zelenikova, R., & Kajander-Unkuri, S.
- Affiliations
- Department of Nursing Science, Fundación San Juan de Dios, Centro de Ciencias de la Salud San Rafael, Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, 28036 Madrid, Spain
- University of Turku (FI)
- Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland
- University of Eastern Finland (FI)
- University of Verona (IT)
- Escola Superior de Enfermagem da Universidade de Lisboa (PT)
- Department of Nursing Science, Jessenius Faculty of Medicine in Martin, Comenius University in Bratislava, 03601 Martin, Slovakia
- University of Udine (IT)
- University of Aveiro (PT)
- Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava, 70103 Ostrava, Czech Republic
- Corresponding author
- Turjamaa, Riitta
- ORCID
- Venue
- Healthcare
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2022-04-19
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 754
- ISSN
- 2227-9032 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9140337
- OpenAlex
- W4224294058
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 4.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Healthcare (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UTUPub (University of Turku) (submittedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System (University of Udine) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Iris (University of Trento) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- THE FINNISH NURSING EDUCATION FOUNDATION SR (2017_2018)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Leadership and Management › Healthcare Education and Workforce Issues
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Research and Theory › Nursing education and management
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Issues, ethics and legal aspects › Nursing Education, Practice, and Leadership
- Keywords
- nursing students, nurse empowerment, transferable skills, nursing education, cross-national comparison, European countries, Nurse Competence Scale
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