Empoderamento psicológico de trabalhadores de enfermagem atuantes em cenário hospitalar durante a pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: in the context of the pandemic caused by the disease related to the type 2 coronavirus (COVID-19), there was an increase in the need for in-hospital care and transformation of the routine of health professionals, especially nursing workers, with an increase in working hours and the need for the worker to adapt to the new demands for health care, without having ideal conditions for the care process. In a social and historical context of fighting the devaluation of nursing work and the pandemic, there was a need to discuss issues related to people management, including psychological empowerment. In this context, the present study aimed to evaluate the psychological empowerment of nursing workers who worked in care scenarios for cases of COVID-19. Method: descriptive, cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach, conducted in a large state university hospital, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with nursing workers. A sociodemographic and work characterization form and the Brazilian version of the Psychological Empowerment Instrument (PEI-Br) were used. The collected data were organized and tabulated in Microsoft Excel 365 software and analyzed using simple descriptive and inferential statistics, using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM Statistics SPSS®), version 22. The chi-square test was used for investigation of the association between categorical variables and Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, to assess the correlation between continuous variables, with a 95% confidence interval. Results: this study showed that three of the four domains assessed using the PEI-Br did not show an association with the studied sociodemographic variables, indicating that all workers are exposed to the same phenomenon. In the impact domain, there was a slight association with the variables Schooling and Category. It is argued that the theory of empowerment, which is already used on a large scale in developed countries and with an emphasis on business administration and people management, has been inserted with workers in the health area, at a speed that is still insufficient to obtain excellence in the organization of nursing work. Conclusion: although there are no statistically significant differences between the variables surveyed, changes we observed in the scores obtained in all domains of psychological empowerment, suggesting the need for observation, surveillance, and intervention with this population. In this sense, the research team provided an educational poster on the subject for the institution's management team.