The Prevalence of Informed Consent in Nursing Care and Its Relationship with Leadership Types of Nursing Profession

Abstract

The purpose of this study takes informed consent to be an innovation in nursing knowledge and seeks to clarify the relationship of its diffusion with present leadership types. The study was conducted between August 30, 2005 and September 15, 2005. We chose 1,148 nurses who agreed to participate in this study from three general hospitals approved by a third-party accreditation council. We employed the innovation adoption model of Rogers for the diffusion of informed consent in nursing care, and utilized the PM instructor behavior measurement scale according to Misumi's PM theory of leadership analysis. We compared the diffusion of informed consent with four leadership types. Results were as follows. The average age of subjects was 32.9±9.6 years, and clinical experience was 10.9±9.3 years. The diffusion of informed consent was 76.4% and prevalent. Regarding four leadership types, PM leadership type(strong P and M function) did better than pm type in promoting the innovation diffusion by knowledge, attitude, decision and practice. These findings suggest that it is important to strengthen both P function(Aim achievement performance) and M function(Group maintenance attitude) to facilitate the diffusion of informed consent in nursing care.