Situations and Reasons Novice Nurses Cannot be Assertive toward Their Senior Nurses

Abstract

This study describes "the situations where novice nurses felt they could not be sufficiently assertive in the workplace. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 102 novice nurses. After explain-ing assertiveness in the questionnaire, participants were asked about situations and reasons where they have felt "I wanted to be assertive in the workplace but could not in the past year". A content analysis based on Krippendorff's method was conducted. There were 81 valid responses from respondents with an average age of 23.7 years. The reported situations yielded nine categories: (1) cannot decline tasks assigned; (2) cannot say I'm confused by unstructured instructions; (3) cannot argue with seniors scold-ing or pointing out dissatisfaction with my work; (4) cannot comment on the unacceptable behavior of seniors; (5) cannot argue against the unacceptable behavior of seniors toward me and other novice nurses; (6) cannot express dissatisfaction with the work; (7) cannot argue about false accusations of errors made by seniors; (8) cannot decline private requests; and (9) others. The reasons for the inability to be assertive yielded the following five categories: (1) considered human relationships important; (2) being instructed; (3) wanted to avoid trouble; (4) feel in debt to seniors; (5) avoid telling something that I could not do; (6) fear of seniors stopping giving advice; (7) don't want seniors to think duties are being neglected; (8) exhausted in an unfamiliar environment; (9) have responsibility for doing what was involved; and (10) felt fear. The responses showed that there were situations where novice nurses were unable to assert their positions with senior nurses in situations at work.