The Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire

This technology is a self-administered questionnaire for assessing the organizational climate of a nurse practitioner (NP) in the primary care setting.

Unmet Need: Assessment of organizational climate for nurse practitioners in primary care

To increase primary healthcare access for the public, the NP workforce is expected to expand. However, this expansion faces many barriers, including those at the organizational level. Organizational policy can strongly shape NP practice by dictating the level of physician supervision, and issues with organizational climate have been linked to poorer patient outcomes. As such, there is a need for methods to accurately assess the organizational climate in the work environment of NPs.

The Technology: Questionnaire assessing the organizational climate for nurse practitioners

This technology is a questionnaire that assesses the organizational climate of an NP in a primary care environment. The questionnaire tests 75 items found to be linked to organizational climate, allowing it to assess five separate domains of underlying organizational climate: autonomy, professional status, empowerment, collegiality, and policy. The assessment tool can be self-administered and collected via mail. Application of this assessment in a primary care setting can help to identify and alleviate organizational barriers to effective nurse practitioner practice.

This technology has been optimized through a study which established construct validity.

Applications:

• Assess the organizational climate of an NP in a primary care environment
• Identify key components of organizational climate that may impact NP performance

Advantages:

• Comprehensive measurement of organizational attributes that affect NP primary care
• Can be self-administered via mail-in format
• Tests 75 items found to be linked to organizational climate
• May improve the work environment of NPs and, subsequently, patient outcomes

Lead Inventor:

Lusine Poghosyan, Ph.D.

Related Publications:

• Poghosyan L, Chaplin WF, Shaffer JA. “Validation of Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire: A New Tool to Study Nurse Practitioner Practice Settings” J Nurs Meas. 2017 Apr 1; 25(1): 142-155.

• Poghosyan L, Nannini A, Stone PW, Smaldone A. “Nurse practitioner organizational climate in primary care settings: implications for professional practice” J Prof Nurs. 2013 Nov-Dec; 29(6): 338-349.

• Poghosyan L, Nannini A, Finkelstein SR, Mason E, Shaffer JA. “Development and psychometric testing of the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire” Nurs Res. 2013 Sep-Oct; 62(5): 325-334.

• Poghosyan L, Nannini A, Clarke S. “Organizational climate in primary care settings: implications for nurse practitioner practice” J Am Assoc Nurse Pract. 2013 Mar; 25(3): 134-140.

Tech Ventures Reference:

• IR CU19234

• Licensing Contact: Joan Martinez