Examining relationships between socio-demographics and self-efficacy among registered nurses in Australia

Background

Self-efficacy in nursing is the nurses’ perception of their abilities to show caring orientations, attitudes, and behaviours and to develop caring relationships with patients. Self-efficacy is associated with years of experience, higher levels of job satisfaction and changes to nursing practices that conform with best practice. There is currently a paucity of evidence and no Australian studies were found examining the relationships between socio-demographic variables and self-efficacy in Australian nurses.

Aim

The aim of this study was to examine if relationships existed between the socio-demographic variables, years of experience, age, gender, marital status, level of education, years employed in the same workplace, employment status, geographical location, specialty area, health sector and Australian state and the perceived self-efficacy of Australian registered nurses.

Research

Design Cross-sectional survey of Australian registered nurses.

Methods

A stratified random sample of registered nurses was drawn from the database of a national industrial and professional organisation. The Caring Efficacy Scale (CES) was categorised into quartiles, and bivariate and multivariable relationships were examined using ordinal logistic regression.

Results

The proportion of nurses reporting low caring efficacy scores tended to decrease with years of experience and was lower in nurses who have been married. After adjustment in the final multivariable model, marital status and years of experience remained significantly related to caring efficacy (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

A relationship exists between years of nursing experience, marital status and perceived self-efficacy among Australian registered nurses who belonged to an industrial and professional organisation. Targeted professional development programmes that support the improvement of perceived self-efficacy of all levels of nurses, might improve nurses’ confidences and abilities to develop caring relationships with patients.