Work empowerment as experienced by nurses in elderly care.

This work describes the experiences of work empowerment among nurses engaged in elderly care in southern Finland. The data were collected with a questionnaire that included items on demographic background as well as verbal, behavioral, and outcome empowerment. The data were analyzed statistically. The nurses (N = 252, response rate = 80.8%) experienced strong verbal and behavioral empowerment. They felt clearly less confident about outcome empowerment than in the two other fields of empowerment. All fields of empowerment showed a statistically significant correlation with each another. Education and work experience were also related to behavioral empowerment. The results provide important clues for the development of elderly care.