Psychosocial Competencies, Self-Efficacy and Performance of Nurses: A Comparative Study

A nurse is a healthcare professional who focuses on autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings. Though nursing is both an art and science but it requires psychosocial competencies in staff members i.e. proper decision making, critical thinking, coping with emotions, interpersonal relationships and effective communication. This construct abreast with competencies plays an important role in enhancing their Self-Efficacy i.e. positive evaluation of oneself. When nurses have higher self-evaluation, it also leads to their better performance in this profession. But is this issue same in private and government hospitals? Taking this perspective in mind, the present study was designed to make a comparative study of psychosocial competencies, self-efficacy and performance in nurses. A sample of 100 head nurses (50 from government and 50 from private hospitals) belonging to an age group of 40-45 years having at least 5 year job experience of same set up was selected. Psychosocial Competence Scale (Anita & Vijayalaxmi, 2007), Self-Efficacy Scale (Raif & Jerusalem, 1995) and Nursing Performance Scale (Ward & Felter, 1979) were administered to measure these variables. The results revealed that private hospital nurses scored high on psychosocial competencies, i.e. effective communication, decision making, empathy and critical thinking and also had better self-efficacy and performance as well than government hospital nurses.