EVALUATION AND COMPARISON OF HEALTH-CARE WORK-ENVIRONMENT SCALE IN MILITARY SETTINGS

The purpose of this study was to describe health care providers' perce ptions of their work environment at a large U.S. Army medical center, and to compare the findings to other military medical centers. The sam ple (N = 112) consisted of the professional nursing staff working on t he nine inpatient units. The Work Environmental Scale (WES) was used t o measure perceptions of the workplace relative to gender, position [h ead nurses, staff nurses, and agency nurses), specialty nursing (inten sive care unit [ICU] versus non-ICU), education (MSN, BSN, and ADN), a nd patterns of differences between the WES subscales of four military medical centers, Results of the study indicate that there were no sign ificant gender differences. Head nurses, non-ICU nurses, and MSN nurse s perceived their environment more positively. There were significant differences in the WES subscales between the military hospitals. Impli cations for nursing using the WES were recommended.