Incentives and procedures effective in increasing survey participation of professional nurses in hospitals.

Positive patient and nurse outcomes depend upon improved clinical nurse work environments. Improvements can be confirmed through environmental surveys that have sufficient participation to yield accurate data. Professional clinical nurses in hospitals face a unique work complexity that inhibits survey participation.

Accurate assessment of clinical nurses' work environments: response rate needed.

Improvement of hospital unit work environments is key to quality patient care, productivity, nurse retention, and job satisfaction. Accurate measurement of such environments is necessary prior to introduction and evaluation of improvement structures and strategies. Characteristics and attributes of work environments are group level phenomena.