The Moderating Effects of Attitudes on Nurses’ Intentions to Report Impaired Practice

Nurses compose the largest segment of employees in the U.S. health care industry. Nurses whose professional functioning is impaired because of substance abuse represent a threat to the health and safety of patients, other health care staff, and themselves. Attitudes toward substance use have been studied in relation to nurses’ intentions (decisions) to report impaired colleagues. Whether, and to what extent, these attitudes may interact with the characteristics of the “offense” to influence intentions to report impaired practice is unknown. In this article we analyze intentions to report a variety of impaired nursing practice scenarios, obtained using a policy-capturing method, to determine the extent to which attitudes held by the “reporter” influence intentions by moderating the effects of the offense characteristics. Intention data from a sample of 120 nurses were modeled using hierarchical techniques to test the moderating hypothesis. Evidence for the moderating effects of attitudes is discussed.