Effects of organisational restructuring of hospitals on nurses.

AIM: The study aims to determine the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of nurses towards organisational change in hospitals, and the effects of organisational cynicism, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and work alienation on nurses' attitudes towards change. BACKGROUND: Changes and employees' thoughts, attitudes and behaviours can be mutually affected in the process of transformation. METHODS: The descriptive, correlative and cross-sectional study was conducted with 1,000 nurses in 52 public hospitals in Turkey. RESULTS: Of the nurses, 59% explained that their workload had increased, and 57% experienced uncertainty and confusion due to the organisational changes in the hospitals. Nurses' total scale scores were 2.86 ± 0.65 for attitude towards change, 2.98 ± 0.52 for work alienation, 2.97 ± 0.84 for organisational cynicism, 2.98 ± 0.70 for job satisfaction and 2.74 ± 0.92 for organisational commitment. Organisational cynicism had a significant effect on the attitude towards change of nurses (R2  = 0.486; F = 235.528; p < .001). CONCLUSION: The nurses had a moderate level of attitude towards change, organisational cynicism, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and work alienation. The primary influence on their attitude against change was their cynical thinking. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The findings of the study can be used to test strategies to reduce cynicism regarding effective management of change.

The malpractices of student nurses in clinical practice in Turkey and their causes.

OBJECTIVE: The study was conducted to identify whether or not student nurses made the medical errors as well as the reasons for the errors. METHODS: A study was conducted with 1067 student nurses studying at 12 universities in Turkey. The data were collected by using medical error scale and a questionnaire on demographic characteristics and malpractices. RESULTS: Overall 28% of the student nurses performed malpractice during clinical practice. Medical errors included failure of complying with sterility and asepsis rules (32%), wrong identification of patient identity (19%), and administrating wrong dosage of medications (12%). They obtained a mean score of 4.19±0.62 from the overall scale and the lowest score was 3.9±0.78 for drug administrations. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students perform considerable amount of malpractice and they should especially improve concerning administration of drugs.

Effectiveness of lemon essential oil in reducing test anxiety in nursing students.

PURPOSE: This study examines the effectiveness of lemon essential oil in reducing test anxiety in first-year nursing students. METHOD: A randomized, pre-test-post-test design was used in this study. The study included 46 first-year students from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of a private university in Istanbul, Turkey. Students were divided into two groups through randomization (Intervention, N = 22; Control, N = 24). In the pre-test, a personal information form, State Test Anxiety Scale (STAS) and Test Anxiety Schedule (TAS) were administered to students in both groups. The students in the intervention group smelled lemon essential oil for 15 min. The study was completed by applying STAS and TAS as post-test. RESULTS: After smelling lemon essential oil, a significant difference was found between the mean pre-test and post-test scores for STAS, its sub-dimensions and TAS (p < 0.01) in the intervention group. It was observed that the nursing students' mean scores for STAS, its sub-dimensions and TAS decreased after smelling lemon essential oil (p<0.05). It was found that the intervention group's mean post-test scores for STAS, cognitive sub-dimension and TAS were lower than those of the control group. Mean post-test scores of physiological sub-dimension in the intervention group were also significantly lower than the control group. It was concluded that lemon essential oil reduced test anxiety by 43.3%. CONCLUSION: Lemon essential oil was found to be effective in reducing test anxiety in nursing students.