Workplace Ostracism in Nurses and Its Determining Factors.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES: This study attempted to identify workplace ostracism in nurses and its determining factors. BACKGROUND: Ostracism, which is a form of mistreatment in the nursing workplace, is neglected in the nursing profession although it can affect the quality of healthcare services. DESIGN: The present study was a descriptive correlational study. METHODS: Nurses in healthcare centers (n = 340) that had at least 12 months of clinical care experience were selected through proportionate stratified random sampling for the period from 2018 to 2019. The study instruments were a modified questionnaire based on the workplace ostracism scale and a questionnaire that assessed personal-social factors. To analyze the data, descriptive and inferential statistics were used. RESULTS: Participants' average ostracism score was 9.03 ± 36.63, and there were statistically significant relationships between ostracism and employment status, university of education, a record of getting an incentive, nurses' current physical disorders, and feelings of colleagues' envy and managers' discrimination. CONCLUSIONS: Applying some approaches to educate nurses about interpersonal relationships and clearly communicating mutual expectations between the staff and nursing management could help solve this problem. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The study results will serve to guide legislators and managers in developing interventions to create supportive and safe work environments, both for nurses and patients.

Iranian Health Literacy Questionnaire (IHLQ): An Instrument for Measuring Health Literacy in Iran.

BACKGROUND: Promoting Health Literacy (HL) is considered as an important goal in strategic plans of many countries. In spite of the necessity for access to valid, reliable and native HL instruments, the number of such instruments in the Persian language is scarce. Moreover, there is no good estimation of HL status in Iran. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to provide a valid, reliable and native instrument to measure and monitor community HL in Iran and also, to provide an estimation of HL status in two Iranian provinces. PATIENTS AND METHODS: By applying the multistage cluster sampling, 1080 respondents (540 from each gender) were recruited from Kerman and Mazandaran provinces of Iran, from February to June 2014 to participate in this cross-sectional study. The development of the Iranian Health Literacy Questionnaire (IHLQ) was initiated with a comprehensive review of the literature. Then, face, content and construct validity as well as reliability were determined. RESULTS: Internal consistency and test-retest reliability (ICC) of the factors was in the range of 0.71 to 0.96 and 0.73 to 0.86, respectively. In order to construct validity, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) = 0.95 and Bartlett's test result of 3.017 with P < 0.001) with varimax rotation was used. Optimal reduced solution, including 36 items and seven factors, was found in EFA. Five of the factors identified were reading/comprehension skills, individual empowerment, communication/decision-making skills, social empowerment and health knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that IHLQ might be a practical and useful tool for investigating HL for Persian language speakers around the world. Since HL is dynamic and its instruments should be regularly revised, further studies are recommended to assess HL with application of IHLQ to detect its potential imperfections.