ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1569486
Nurse Mangers' Perceptions about Supportive Work Environment Support in Public Hospitals in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional Study among Nurse Managers
Provisionally accepted
- King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Background: Optimal work environment is essential for effective performance of healthcare workers, particularly nurse managers to achieve high quality services. The current study aims to assess and compares the nurse managers' perceptions about the adequacy of support within their work environment and availability of resources in four main hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Subjects and methods: Through a cross-sectional study design, 260 nurse managers from four main general hospitals in Jeddah and Riyadh were selected by convenient sampling and were invited to be included in the study. Their perception about work environment was assessed by The Quality Work Environment Study (QWEST) Questionnaire, which had been proven to be valid and reliable. Data were stored and analyzed using SPSS Ver.26 software. In addition to descriptive statistics, independent sample t tests and ANOVA were used for testing the significance of differences in subgroups. P value of less than 0.05 indicated statistical significance. Results: The perception of nurse managers towards items reflecting work environment ranged between moderate (Mean = 3.72, SD = 0.678) regarding support from supervisors regarding acting on values even it is at personal cost, to high for supporting teamwork to achieve goals and outcome (Mean = 4.13, SD = 0.621). There was no statistically significant difference of perceived work environment in studied hospitals. Non-Saudis had higher positive perception of work environment (Mean = 4.0, SD = 0.52) than Saudis (Mean = 3.8, SD = 0.50), P = 0.006. Also, they showed moderate perception about availability of resources and logistics, with no statistically significant difference between hospitals except for availability of clerical supporting staff. Conclusion: Nurse managers generally perceive moderate to high level of empowerment and support, indicating a positive environment across general hospitals. Non-Saudi nurse managers viewed their work environment more positively than Saudi nurse managers. Although hospitals all had uniform resources, there was variance in clerical support between them. Hospitals should empower clerical staffing levels and adjust them to reduce administrative burdens, to enable nurse managers to focus more on clinical leadership and patient care.
Keywords: nurse managers, Perception, Work environment, Saudi Arabia, support
Received: 31 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Almabadi, Salem, Aboshaiqah and Alanazi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Naif H. Alanazi, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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