Nurse Leadership Style and Quality of Care in Clinical Setting: a Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Nowadays there are mounting concerns about leadership style because of its critical role in job satisfaction and the quality of care of patients. Objectives: To explore different of leadership style to improve quality of care in healthcare setting upon empirical literature published in the last ten years.

Design: Literature review. Data sources: A comprehensive electronic database search was conducted in PubMed (2010–2020), Web of Science (2010–2020), CINAHL (2010–2020), Cochrane (2010–2020), to retrieve relevant articles published in English April 2015 and Mei 2020.

Review methods: Key terms and phrases associated with leadership style, quality of care and nurses. The abstracts or full texts of research papers were reviewed prior to their inclusion in the review.

Results: A total of 9 papers were included in this review. The impact of leadership style to improve quality of care in decreasing cost, increasing patient satisfaction, and patient safety has been identified in a number of research studies.  Leadership style is closely related to quality of care, extra effort, effectiveness, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, staff intention to stay, inspirational motivation, general health well being, sex, age, educationl background and nurses’ assigned unit. Various mediating or moderating pathways have been identified with leadership style and quality of care such as work environment, structural empowerment, organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

Conclusions: It is vital to choose effective leadership style because this has the potential both to improve quality of care and ensure an adequate nursing workforce. The indirect relationships and predictors of leadership style and quality of care contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the complex phenomenon of leadership style which in turn may aid the development of effective strategies to address the nursing shortage and increase the quality of patient care.