Transformational leadership: Perceptions of Finnish nursing staff

Abstract

<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>To describe how transformational are Finnish nursing leaders perceived by nursing staff and find differences in their perceptions by background variables.</p> <p><strong>Methods: </strong>The web based survey was conducted in 2010 using a total sample of 1500 nursing staff (RN, LPN, radiographers, laboratory nurses, physiotherapistists e.g.) in five study hospitals. The instrument was developed based on the large literature review by researchers and the pilot study was made in 2007 and tested in 2008. Data were analyzed with SPSS 14.0 for Windows program. Frequency and percentage distribution were used for data description. Based on the explorative factor analysis, five mean scores were formed. Nonparametric tests were used in the data analysis.</p> <p><strong>Results:</strong> Nursing staff perceived their nurse managers be friendly, trustable, positive to staff in different ages and they were supported to learn and develop themselves. Nurse managers did not give enough feedback of work and they did not use justice rewarding. Nursing staff couldn't evaluate if their leaders use the evaluation knowledge to develop units. The work of nurse executives was poorly known. One of the hospitals had more transformational leaders than the four others. Nursing staff who evaluated the quality of care high perceived their leaders more transformational than the others.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Finnish nursing leaders are partly transformational leaders. They are humane leaders, but they need to make themselves more visible. They are well educated, but the staff couldn't see their knowledge. The ideology of shared leadership is still used only a little. In future, hospitals would benefit to learn about shared leadership using different councils, committees and. The development of evidence based practice should be continued.</p>