Mediating Effect of Empowerment in the Relationship between Nursing Professionalism and Job Satisfaction among Insurance Review Nurses

Purpose: This study examined the mediating effect of empowerment on the relationship between nursing professionalism and job satisfaction, with the goal of informing strategies to enhance job satisfaction among insurance review nurses. Methods: A total of 165 insurance review nurses with more than 1 year of work experience in 12 general hospitals (≥500 beds) participated in this study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. The mediating effect was tested using the PROCESS Macro (model 4) in SPSS version 26.0 with 10,000bootstrap samples. Results: The mean scores for nursing professionalism, empowerment, and job satisfaction were 100.37 (standard deviation [SD], 17.03), 86.24 (SD, 17.70), and 45.44 (SD, 9.17), respectively. Significant positive correlations were observed between nursing professionalism and job satisfaction (r=.64, p<.001), empowerment and job satisfaction (r=.77, p<.001), and nursing professionalism and empowerment. Empowerment was found to partially mediate the relationship between nursing professionalism and job satisfaction (95% CI, .20–.44). Conclusion: Enhancing empowerment and strengthening nursing professionalism are essential for improving job satisfaction among insurance review nurses. Institutional interventions that promote professional identity and provide structural empowerment may increase job satisfaction and support retention within this specialized nursing workforce.