الفهرس 
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Abstract
Staff nurses who have a perception of organizational support facilitate a work environment conducive to a culture of excellence. In turn this healthy work environment promotes quality care, patient safety and staff retention. When staff nurses perceived support from their supervisors as specific and from their health care organization as general, they become more engaged and committed and translate this into extra work behaviors or citizenship behaviors.
POS is defined as how much health care organization values nursing staff contributions and cares about them. It includes three dimensions namely: fairness, supervisor support, and organizational rewards (job condition).
POS has a strong positive effect on organizational commitment and job satisfaction and reduces turnover intentions. When nursing staff believe their health care organization value and reward their contributions, they in turn, feel obligation to the health care organization should be reciprocated with higher in-role and extra-role performance. OCB is defined as a group of discretionary workplace behaviors that exceed nurse’s basic requirements of his job and go beyond the call of duty. It consists of five dimensions, namely; altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, sportsmanship, and civic virtue.
Aim of the study
The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between nursing staff perception of organizational support and their organizational citizenship behaviors.
Study design:
A descriptive correlation design was utilized to conduct this study.
Setting
The study was conducted at El-Behira Governorate in all inpatient care units (medical, surgical and ICU) at the main three hospitals namely: Damanhour National Medical Institute, Etay-Albaroud General Hospital and Kafr El-Dawar General Hospital. These hospitals have the high capacity of nursing staff.
Subjects:
The study subjects included proportional sampling from the nursing staff at the three previously mentioned hospitals who were available in the previously selected hospitals. They comprised of 312 staff nurses who were responsible for providing direct nursing care to patients. They were divided as the following; professional nurses (n=51) and technical nurses (n=261). The inclusion criteria were: welling to participate in the study and had at least one year of experience at work.
Tools:
The study utilized two tools for data collection namely: perceived organizational support scale, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) scale.
Tool Ι: Perceived Organizational Support Scale:
Developed by Eisenberger et al. (1986) (28). It consisted of 36 items distributed on the three main dimensions of organizational support namely: fairness (14 sub-items), supervisor support (14 sub-items), and job condition (8 sub-items).
Responses to the questionnaire items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. The scoring system for all items of the questionnaire was done as follows: low organizational support from 36 to 83 score, moderate organizational support from 84 to131 score and high organizational support from 132 to180 score. The score was reversed for negative items.
Tool II: Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) Scale:
Developed by Smith et al. (1983) (29), and modified by LePine et al (2002) (30). It consisted of 24 questions distributed on five dimensions namely: altruism (5 items), conscientiousness (5 items), courtesy (5 items), sportsmanship (5 items), and civic virtue (4 items). Reversed scores were done for the dimension of sportsmanship which includes 5 statements.
Responses for items of the questionnaire were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from never (1) to almost always (5). The scoring system for all items of the questionnaire was done as follows: low organizational citizenship behavior from 24 to 55 score, moderate organizational citizenship behavior from 56 to 87 score and high organizational citizenship behavior from 88 to 120 score.
In addition, questions related to demographic characteristics of nursing staff including such as: age, sex, marital status, years of experience, educational level and type of working unit.
Method
1. An official permission was obtained from the dean of the Faculty of Nursing and the director of each of the identified settings of the study to collect the necessary data.
2. The study tools were tested for their content validity by a panel of five experts in the field of the study.
3. The reliability of the two tools was tested statistically using Cronbach’s Correlation Coefficient Alpha test to measure internal consistency of the items composing each dimension of the tools. The results proved that Cronbach’s Correlation Coefficient Alpha tests were proved to be reliable 0.844 and 0.789 for POS scale and OCB scale respectively.
4. A pilot study was carried out on 10% of nursing staff (n=30) who were not be included in the study subjects in order to check and ensure the clarity and applicability of the tools, identify obstacles and problems that may be encountered during data collection and estimate the time needed to fill the questionnaire and the necessary modifications were done.
5. Data collection for this study was conducted by the researcher by hand delivered questionnaires to the study subjects at the study settings after explanation of the aim of the study and the needed instruction was provided to them. Data collection took about two months from 1- 3-2017 to 30-4-2017.
6. Ethical considerations:
• Before data collection, an informed consent was obtained from the study subjects for participation in the study to collect the necessary data.
• Anonymity and privacy of subjects were assured and confidentiality of the data was maintained.
• The right of the study subject to withdraw from the study at any time was explained and assured.
7. Statistical analysis:
Data was revised, coded and fed to statistical software SPSS (Statistical Package for Special Science) version 20 to perform tabulation and the following statistical techniques:
A. Descriptive statistics:
• Cross tabulations with numbers and percent of nursing staff socio-demographic characteristics. It was used for describing and summarizing qualitative data.
• The score was reversed for negative items scores of each dimension summed up and converted into mean percentages.
B. Analytical one way analysis:
• ANOVA test (F-ratio) is a parametric statistical test used to compare mean score for more than two independent groups.
• Pearson’s Correlation Matrix (r) was used to investigate the correlation between organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviors in relation to each study setting.
• Chi-square test ) was used to compare levels of nursing staff perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviors at the study setting
The main results of the present study were as follows:
• The study result clarified that there was a highly statistical significant differences between total POS and total OCB.
• There was a statistical significant difference between levels of POS of nursing staff and their working hospital setting. Also, there was a statistical significant difference between levels of OCB of nursing staff and their working hospital setting.
• The present study revealed that there were highly statistical significant differences between nurses’ perception of organizational support and their socio-demographic characteristics except the educational level.
• The result showed that there was a statistical significant difference between organizational citizenship behaviors and nursing staff socio-demographic characteristics except age, sex and units.
• According to nursing socio demographic characteristics, about half of the total nurses (50.3%) were in age group less than 30 years old and the majority of the nursing staff (85.9%) was females.
In the light of the findings of the current study the following recommendations can be made:
A- Recommendation for hospital administrators:
o Develop strategies to create an organizational climate that makes nursing staff feel more supported through participation of nursing staff in different hospital committee, providing chances for continuing education.
o Establish standard for healthy work environments, which in turn, will motivate nurses to engage in OCB.
o Provide equitable and fair in the developing, monitoring and enforcement of all management practices.
o Develop achievable goals and reward proportionately.
o Promote strong social networks that offer information for their staff about how to become a successful hospital and provide friendships climate that make work-life more pleasant.
o Encourage nursing staff to participate in decision making and problem solving for work related issues.
B- Recommendation for first line nurse managers:
o Provide nursing staff with continuous positive feedback about their performance to encourage them to do more.
o Arrange and implement continuous job training programs to enhance nursing staff to improve their skills.
o Give more attention to needs of their nursing staff and how to satisfy them.
o Listen to their nursing staff about work related problems and involve them in solving these problems to feel more comfort at work.
• Recommendations for further studies:
• Study the impact of managers’ leadership style on nursing staff perception of organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviors.
• Investigate the impact of perceived organizational support on nurses’ performance, productivity and quality of patient care.
• Study impact of OCB on nurses’ productivity and quality of patient care.