How time pressure affects the promotive and prohibitive voice of emergency nurses: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

As a developing country, the number of emergency nurses in China is not growing nearly as rapidly as the number of patients, which puts a great deal of stress on emergency nurses’ working hours and may thus impede care quality and patient safety.

OBJECTIVE:

This study aims to investigate the relationship between time pressure and voice behavior and to explore whether temporal leadership acts as a moderator in the relationship between time pressure and voice behavior.

METHODS:

Data were collected using scales that have been published in authoritative foreign journals and translated and validated by Chinese scholars. To examine the results more accurately, this paper used the partial least squares (PLS) approach to analyze the research model and verify the research hypothesis.

RESULTS:

The results of the path analysis and hypothesis testing showed that challenge time pressure and hindrance time pressure both positively and significantly influenced prohibitive voice and promotive voice, while the moderating effect of temporal leadership on the relationship between time pressure and voice behavior was not significant.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our study revealed that challenge time pressure positively influences emergency nurses’ promotive voice and motivates them to provide their opinions in a reasonable way, while hindrance time pressure motivates emergency nurses’ prohibitive voice, which is not conducive to the improvement of overall organizational functioning and may even damage otherwise good organizational relationships. Furthermore, the study found that the level of temporal leadership does not affect the strength of the relationship between time pressure and voice behavior.