Survey of nurse's perception of their head nurse's empowering behaviors in teaching hospital of Lorestan university of medical sciences, 2008

one of the success’ secrets for nursing leaders in health organizations is to empower nurses. Head nurses’ empowering behaviors consists: creating meaningfullness of work, Participation nurses in decision making, expressing confidence in high performance, facilitating goals and festering autonomy and freedom all of which behaviors induce to perception of empowerment by nurses. The perception of empowerment increases autonomy, promots quality of care, increases satisfaction and decrease professional tensions. The aim of this study was to determe the nurses’ perception of their head nurses’ empowering behaviors in teaching hospitals of Lorestan university of medical sciences in khoramabad. 132 registered nurses occupied in three teaching hospitals: Shohada, Shahid Madani and Asali entered the study by strafied random sampling. This was a cross-sectional descriptive survey in which nurses’ perception of their head nurses’ empowering behaviors and were respectively measured by Leader Empowering Behavior (L.E.B) scale with 27 items (=0.82), and self reported questionnaires were completed by nurses outside their work setting. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistical tests by spss soft ware. Nurses in this study obtained a high score in L.E.B scale (= 5.01 1.28) from all L.E.B subscales, confidence in the employee and meaning of work rated the most empowering leader behavior (= 5.16 1.26), (= 5.22 1.15) and autonomy from bureaucracy rated the lower L.E.B. (= 4.80 1.49). Findings point out that cooperational managing system has an important role in increasing work effectiveness through empowering leader behaviors. It will also be important for current nurse managers to learn new methods of leading that will empower staff nurse to participate in their work, and be motivated enough to provide the high-quality care their patients deserve.