Assessment of entrepreneurial personality traits and problem solving skills of nurses and the factors affecting them

The concept of entrepreneurship is one of the important issues that is particularly focused in the recent years with the shift from industrial society to knowledge society. The idea of entrepreneurship in nursing profession is not a new concept, rather it was studied independently at the beginning of the 20th century so that nurses could provide patients with care. Problem solving skills are important properties that each individual needs to continue their life, however, they are at the focal point of nursing profession. The aim of this study was to identify problem solving skill levels, entrepreneurial personality traits of the nurses who work in group company-owned hospitals in Istanbul. The suitability of normal distribution was examined through Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Non-parametric tests were used in advanced level analyses since the values of significance were less than 0.05. Mann-Whitney test was used for two independent variables, Kruskal-Wallis test for multiple variables, and relation analyses were carried out with Spearman's correlation coefficients. Survey method was used in the study. Data was collected from 410 nurses using nurse information form, Problem Solving Inventory, Entrepreneurial Personality Traits Scale, and Perception of Entrepreneurship Opportunities Scale. The mean age of the participants was 29.50 ± 6.205 and 81.5% of them were female.We found that problem solving skills of nurses is medium-level (93.03 ± 20.794). As the lowest point (2,23 ± 0,655) was related to subdimension of "Being Tolerant For Uncertainty" under Entrepreneurial Personality Traits Scale, the highest point (4.39 ± 0.571) was related to "Need For Success". The results showed that there was a a little relationship between Problem Solving Inventory points and Entrepreneurial Personality Features Scale points, Problem Solving Inventory points and Perception of Entrepreneurship Opportunities Scale points were negatively related while Entrepreneurial Personality Features Scale points and Perception of Entrepreneurship Opportunities points were positively related.