Practice Environment of Nurses in Tertiary Public and Private Hospitals in La Union

ABSTRACT. Global perspectives of nursing practice are ever-changing and  perhaps shaped by the environment where the nurses’ work. The nurses’ practice  environment (NPE) was defined as the organizational characteristics of a work setting  that facilitate or constrain professional nursing practice (Lake, 2002). NPE along with  factors and outcomes were assessed in different countries and regions with studies  proving that a favorable NPE enhances quality of healthcare and positive outcomes  for the nurses, the hospital and the patients. Based on the assumptions of Florence  Nightingale’s Environmental Theory, beyond the physical atmosphere, the nurses also  must also have an environment that support their professional practice and  development. Bringing focus on NPE is equivalent to the path of promoting nurses’  welfare regardless of the type of facility; however, there is a scarcity on the  assessment of the practice environment of nurses between public and private  hospitals including the factors that could significantly influence such. Therefore, this  study aims to describe and compare the practice environment of nurses in tertiary  public and private hospitals in La Union with an analysis of factors associated to and  influences NPE. This cross-sectional study used descriptive, comparative and correlational  designs. Ethical clearance was observed accordingly. A total of 540 nurses  participated with from the four (4) tertiary hospitals particularly two from each public  and private. Data were gathered systematically using a demographic questionnaire  and the Practice Environment Scale of the Nurse Work Index (PES-NWI) of Lake  (2002) that has a Likert scale for each indicator. SPSS v. 21 was used to examine the  descriptive and inferential statistics of the study at a preset level of significance of p <  0.05.