Objectives: The purpose of the study is to determine the level of rationing of nursing care and its relationship to nurses' perception of their practice environment.

Methods: The study employed a descriptive, cross-sectional study design. The Basel Extent of Rationing of Nursing Care (BERNCA) was administered to assess the level of care rationing while the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) was used to describe nurses' practice environment. A total of 147 nurses participated in the study. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the effect of various respondent characteristics and nurse practice environment on care rationing.

Results: Only practice environment total score was significantly associated with rationing of care total scores (B = -0.20, p < 0.05). Results of the regression show that for every unit increase in nurse practice environment total score, indicating a better work environment, there is a 0.20 unit decrease in rationing of nursing care total score, which indicated less rationing of care. Respondent characteristics are not significantly related.

Conclusion: Nurses most frequently rationed tasks in the areas of caring/support and monitoring. The less frequently rationed tasks involved medical, technical, and therapeutic aspects of care. The identification of rationing predictors can aid in determining starting points for hospital policy reforms. Prevalence levels can indicate when care rationing exceeds identified thresholds, if any. Nursing administrators can use implicit rationing of nursing care as a crucial indicator of the impact of strategies and changes in the nurse practice environment (e.g., changes in staffing levels, skill mix, and other resources).

Key Words: Health Care Rationing, Health Facility Environment, Nursing Care

Health Care Rationing ; Health Facility Environment ; Nursing Care

Objectives: Nurse empowerment is essential to ensure delivery of the best quality patient care and attaining positive nurse outcomes. Studies describe its relationship to retention, patient safety, commitment, productivity, job satisfaction, and positive outcomes. The study aimed to determine the level of empowerment of nurses in a tertiary university hospital during the pandemic crisis. Methods: The study was an exploratory descriptive cross-sectional design. Participants (N = 176, Nurses) were randomly selected through a sampling frame. The validated self-administered questionnaire, the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire II, was used for data collection. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether there were statistically significant differences between the means of the participants’ empowerment scores when grouped according to their demographic profile. Results: The study found that the nurses in the tertiary university hospital have an overall moderate level of empowerment (TSE x̄ = 22.69, SD = 3.53; GE x̄ = 3.72, SD = 1.01). It was also found that there were statistically significant differences between the means of their total structural and global empowerment scores when grouped according to their age group, civil status, length of service, level of position, and area designation; while no statistically significant difference existed when grouped by their sex and level of education. Conclusion Since nurse empowerment leads to positive nurse and patient outcomes, improving levels of empowerment is thus essential. The results of this study will help administrators identify groups of nurses with relatively lower levels of empowerment and in turn develop programs that will help improve their levels of empowerment.
pandemic