The qualities of an empowered nurse and the factors involved.

BACKGROUND In developing the quality of health care attention has recently focused on the professional progress of nurses. Simultaneously, empowerment ideology has been increasingly adopted as the conceptual framework for the development of nursing. The empowerment process has usually been described from an organizational starting point. In the present study empowerment is approached starting from the individual nurse's point of view. AIM This study aims to explore (a) what an empowered nurse is like, (b) how he/she performs his/her functions, (c) what promotes empowerment, and (d) what prevents empowerment. METHOD The material was collected by interviewing 30 nurses who had participated in a career advancement project at a university hospital in Finland. The data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. RESULTS Five categories were discerned: moral principles, personal integrity, expertise, future orientation and sociability. These represented the performance and the qualities of an empowered nurse, as well as the promoting and preventing factors. CONCLUSIONS Empowerment is a process steered by personal values and endeavours as well as by environmental factors. An empowered nurse possesses those qualities which make possible high self-esteem and successful professional performance and progress.