Impact of professional commitment on professional capability improvement and care quality dimensions: A multi‐wave study

Aims and objectives To examine how the three dimensions of professional commitment impact professional capabilities improvement and five key dimensions of care quality. Background While professional commitment is known to retain nurses, we do not know how its three dimensions—affective, continuance and normative commitment—formulate five care quality dimensions: assurance, reliability, responsiveness, empathy and tangibles. Design We used a three‐wave, follow‐up design to follow a sample of nurse participants. Methods We collected responses from 430 nurses who worked for a medical centre in Northern Taiwan during 2017–2019. Most (78.9%) of the respondents had an age between 20–40 years. We used Professional Commitment Scale of Meyer et al. ( Journal of Applied Psychology , 1993, 78 , 538) and Care Quality Scale of Teng et al. ( Journal of Nursing Scholarship , 2010, 41 , 301). STROBE statement was chosen as EQUATOR checklist. Results We found that affective professional commitment is positively related to intention to improve professional capabilities, action to improve professional capabilities and thus to four dimensions of care quality: assurance, reliability, responsiveness and empathy. Conclusions Our model explains how three key dimensions of professional commitment contribute to care quality. Our findings support the link between action to improve professional capabilities and dimensions of care quality. Relevance to clinical practice Nursing managers can inform nurses of positive patient feedback, thus enhancing nurses' affective professional commitment, which would likely motivate their devotion to upgrading their professional capabilities, thus further contributing to the quality of the care they provide.