Leadership styles and leadership outcomes in nursing homes: a cross-sectional analysis
- PDF / 764,190 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 33 Downloads / 232 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Leadership styles and leadership outcomes in nursing homes: a cross-sectional analysis Joris Poels1* , Marc Verschueren1,2, Koen Milisen1,3 and Ellen Vlaeyen1
Abstract Background: Although leadership is considered as a key factor in health care, leadership styles and outcomes in nursing homes often remain a black box. Therefore, this study explored leadership styles and leadership outcomes of head nurses and directors of nursing (DoN) in nursing homes based on well-defined leadership concepts. Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional analysis was conducted on baseline data of an ongoing cohort study comprising a convenience sample of nursing home staff (n = 302). Leadership styles and leadership outcomes of head nurses and DoN were measured through the rater form of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X (MLQ5X). Based on the Full Range of Leadership Model, the MLQ-5X visualizes transformational (relation and change focused), transactional (task-focused) and passive-avoidant (absence of leadership) leadership styles. Scores of head nurses and DoN for leadership styles and outcomes were compared with European Reference Scores (ERS) using two-sided one-sample t-tests. Results: Compared with ERS, head nurses and DoN scored significantly lower (p < 0.001) on transformational and transactional leadership styles and significantly higher (p < 0.001) on passive-avoidant leadership styles. All leadership outcomes were significantly lower (p < 0.001) for head nurses. Similar results, however not statistically significant, were found concerning leadership outcomes of DoN. Conclusions: Results indicate that passive-avoidant leadership styles are excessively present in contrast to transformational leadership styles in nursing homes. This highlights an urgent need to invest in leadership development. Therefore, future research should focus on interventions for the development of transformational leadership. Keywords: Leadership, Residential care facilities, Nursing home, Care manager, Nurse, Director of nursing
Background Worldwide demographic evolutions affect the organization of health care. Especially nursing homes face daunting challenges to meet present and future care needs [1, 2]. Firstly, individuals consider a nursing home as a last resort and therefore prefer to live as long as possible in their own home [3]. Consequently, most residents admitted to a nursing home suffer from multiple * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Academic Centre for Nursing and Midwifery, KU Leuven, Kapucijnenvoer 35, 4th floor, P.B. 7001, 3000 Leuven, Belgium Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
complex conditions and are in need of more assistance [4, 5]. Secondly, poor work organization, time pressure, high workload, staff shortages and turnover are potential threats to quality of care and patient safety [6–9]. Previous research showed high annualized turnover rates for certified nurse assistants (74.5%), registered nurse
Data Loading...
