Comparison of professional autonomy of nurses working in intensive care units and other wards in selected hospital of Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2020

With the increasing pace of change in today's world and the changing needs of individuals, the nursing profession needs to adapt to these changes and constantly rebuild in this area. Under these circumstances, nurses are expected to make decisions, reflect, and take responsibility for their decisions rather than just doing what is called ordering. Autonomy in the workplace is one of the strong predictors of nurses' retention in the profession and their job satisfaction, and reducing its levels will increase the decline in the nursing workforce. Autonomy is one of the most important components of self-motivation and its presence in the workplace promotes employee health. Gaining autonomy has been one of the main challenges of professionalism in nursing throughout history. The present study is a descriptive comparative study that was conducted with the aim of comparing the professional autonomy of nurses working in the intensive care unit and other departments in the selected hospital of Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2020.

The research environment includes intensive care units (6 wards) and normal wards (16 wards) of Hazrat Rasoul Akram Hospital (PBUH) affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences. The research community is working in special wards and inpatients. the study was done by census method,and 310 nurses participated in the study. In this study, the standard questionnaire of professional autonomy of Dempster 1990 nurses was used and its reliability was confirmed with Cronbach's alpha of 0.95. The criterion for entering the research is to have at least 6 months of work experience in the current department.

Findings showed that the professional independence score of the studied units in ICU was 107.78±13.18 and in CCU was 99.10 ± 11.26 which according to Pvalue = 0.079, there was a significant difference between There are no scores for the two groups. However, the mean score of professional independence score of the studied units in normal wards was significantly different due to P value <0.001 compared to ICU and CCU intensive care units. Nurses in ICU and CCU intensive care units had higher independence scores than nurses in other wards. Also, in the normal sections, the highest scores of professional independence are related to the mental section (mean= 81.45) and the lowest scores of professional independence are related to the internal section of men (mean=70).

Professional independence in the intensive care unit is at a medium level and in the normal sector is at a low level. Due to the direct impact of nurses 'professional independence on the level of quality of patient care and nurses' performance, therefore, measures should be taken to support managers and change the management structure and improve the ability of nurses.