Nurse professional status, identity, and stress
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Influence of Organisational Identity and Professional Identity on the Stress of Nurses of Different Hierarchal Status
IRAS ID
303379
Contact name
Simon Payne
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aberystwyth University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 23 days
Research summary
Organisational identification (OI) is the extent to which an organisation is incorporated into an individual’s self-concept and reflects the psychological merging of the organisation with the self (Ashforth et al., 2008). Similarly, professional identity (PI) is an individual’s self-concept of the requirements, values and norms regarding a profession, which distinguishes one profession from another and guides one’s attitudes, actions and behaviours (Maginnis, 2018). The location of one’s professional status within the social hierarchy is recognised to impact one’s level of exposure to stress, as higher and lower status roles are recognised to be more vulnerable to stress (Grace & van Heuvelen, 2019; Schieman et al., 2006). The way in which one perceives their status could however differ to their actual (objective) status, and research has identified that one’s subjective status is more consistently related to health outcomes (Chen et al., 2012).
Within the nursing profession, OI and PI are recognised to have many beneficial outcomes, as studies have recognised that higher identification predicts higher immunity to stress, job satisfaction, and retention (Fitzgerald, 2020). However, two previous service evaluations conducted by the researcher (KW), identified that nurses qualitatively described elements of the cancer Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) PI as an additional stressor. It was suggested that these findings may be the result of the CNSs over-identifying and being overly committed to their profession, as a result of their enhanced professional (specialist) status. Extensive research has been carried out on nurse PI; however, the potential negative effects have typically been ignored, and empirical evidence supporting over-identification has only focused on organisational identity – although this research is scarce (Avanzi et al., 2020). Additionally, no study, to our knowledge, has explored the influence of professional status on OI and PI. The current study therefore aims to address these matters using quantitative scales, where nurses employed by the Hywel Dda UHB will be required to rate their level of OI, PI, overcommitment and stress, which will be measured against their level of objective and subjective professional status.
REC name
N/A
REC reference
N/A