An Investigation into Self-efficacy, Clinical Decision-making and the Level of Relationship between them among Nurses in Guilan Province

Different studies have investigated the effects of various factors on self-efficacy and clinical decision-making among nurses and other professionals in the fields of health and treatment.  There is, however, little research investigating self-efficacy, clinical decision-making, and the level of relationship between them with regard to the environment and culture of organizations.

This study was conducted with the aim of investigating self-efficacy and clinical decision-making among nurses in terms of individual and social variables and discovering the level of relationship between self-efficacy and ‘clinical decision-making among nurses in Guilan Province in 2017-2018.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study and 222 nurses working at different units of teaching and treatment centers in the city of Rasht were recruited after obtaining formal written consent from them. The data collection instruments were a demographic questionnaire, a self-efficacy questionnaire and a decision-making questionnaire. To analyze the data, SPSS/ 21 was used.

The results showed no significant difference between nurses’ clinical decision-making scores and the demographic variables of age (p=0.4), education level (p=0.27), Bachelorchr('39')s degree in nursing (p=0.198), work experience (p=0.39) and work shift (p=0.9). There was, however, a significant correlation between self-efficacy score and the age (p=0.001) and work experience at the hospital (p=0.002). The logistic regression analysis indicated that self-efficacy has a significant effect on decision making after controlling for the predictor effects in such a way that by adding one point to the self-efficacy score the score of clinical decision making increased by 0.39 points.

Understanding the relationship between self-efficacy and clinical decision-making of nurses can be indicative of the need for  various training courses to improve the self-efficacy level of nurses so that this working class can create better clinical decisions.