Iran Journal of Nursing

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Taleghani N, Mardani Hamooleh M, Seyedfatemi N, Haghani H. Viewpoints of Nurses toward Prosocial Tendencies at the Teaching Hospitals Affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences. IJN 2019; 32 (120) :50-59
URL: http://ijn.iums.ac.ir/article-1-3015-en.html

Background & Aims: Prosocial tendencies are aimed at improving the conditions of the recipient of aids, and the motivation of the individual is not to fulfill professional obligations. On the other hand, the recipient of aid is not an organization, but rather a human. Prosocial tendencies result in psychological wellbeing in individuals, so that self-esteem would become positive, life satisfaction would increase, individuals would become socially empowered, and their empathy with the other community members would extend. In fact, these tendencies lay the basis for amicable relations with others, cause empathy and compassion toward others, and enhances the support of those in need. As a result, these tendencies lead to the social flourishing of individuals and enhance their power of moral reasoning. From a deeper perspective, it could be stated that the individuals harboring these tendencies enjoy higher social trust and ultimately have favorable psychosocial health. In contrast, those without these tendencies experience greater social anxiety and emotional exhaustion and may feel unable to help and empathize with others. Prosocial tendencies promote the professional satisfaction of employees, making them content with communicating with others, which in turn leads to kindness toward others, absence of depressive symptoms, and less occupational interrelations. Therefore, it is safe to say that it is essential for nurses to benefit from prosocial tendencies, especially when they are required to provide comprehensive patient care. Nurses need these tendencies to establish valuable and ethical relations with patients and their families, which will ultimately result in their own moral transcendence. The present study aimed to assess prosocial tendencies among nurses.
Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted on 200 nurses employed in four teaching hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS) in 2019. The participants were selected via quota sampling. Data were collected using a demographic form to measure the variables of age, gender, marital status, education level, work experience, ward of employment, employment status, type of work shift, and interest in the nursing profession. The other tool was the scale of prosocial tendencies, which has been designed by Carlo et al. The content validity method was used to assess the validity of the tool. For this purpose, the Persian and English versions of the tool were provided to five nursing professors, and their corrective comments were applied. Moreover, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to evaluate the reliability of the instrument, which was estimated at 0.84 for the entire tool. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 16 using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent t-test and analysis of variance), and the P-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. The study protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of IUMS.
Results: The mean total score of the prosocial tendencies of the nurses was 88.9 ± 15.74. Among the prosocial tendencies, unknown dimensions (3.81 ± 0.88), critical dimension (3.72 ± 0.92), emotional dimension (3.72 ± 1.1), compliant dimension (3.68 ± 0.78), and altruistic tendencies (3.15 ± 0.82) had the highest to the lowest mean scores, respectively. Furthermore, no significant correlations were observed between the demographic characteristics of the nurses and prosocial tendencies.
Conclusion: According to the results, the nurses believed that helping others was the most desirable among various prosocial tendencies as long as the recipients of aid are aware of the help. This could be attributed to the nature of the nursing profession, which is essentially a populist profession, with professionals seeking to provide services to the community members, even if they are unaware of the services. In this study, the prosocial tendencies in the altruistic dimension had the lowest mean score compared to the other dimensions. Given the importance of altruism in the nursing profession and the consequences of its lack, as well as the fact that in the present study, this prosocial tendency had the lowest status from the perspective of the nurses, related interventions are critical to promote this tendency in nurses. These interventions should be based on psychological training in this area. In the present study, no significant correlations were observed between the demographic characteristics of the nurses and their prosocial tendencies. However, further investigations are required in this regard to clarify the possible associations between the demographic characteristics of the nurses and their prosocial tendencies. In addition, nursing researchers are advised to conduct studies with a qualitative approach in order to identify prosocial tendencies and analyze the factors that facilitate and threaten these tendencies. In clinical nursing, the results of this study could help nursing managers to consider care models based on prosocial tendencies in the healthcare plans for nurses, and various dimensions of these tendencies could be the building blocks of such models. The use of non-probability sampling in this study could be considered a limitation since the nature of this method makes it difficult to generalize the findings.