Clinical educators' empowerment, job tension, and job satisfaction: A test of Kanter's Theory.

Recruitment and retention of qualified nursing staff are vital to safe patient care and require the expertise of clinical educators to facilitate the nurses' professional development. However, organizational redesign has challenged clinical educators with role ambiguity, job stress, and decreased job satisfaction. This study used Kanter's Structural Theory of Organizational Behavior to examine the relationships between clinical educators' perceptions of empowerment, job tension, and job satisfaction. High levels of workplace empowerment were significantly related to low levels of job tension. In addition, the combination of high levels of empowerment and low levels of job tension was predictive of high levels of job satisfaction. Implications for staff development administrators are discussed.