Management Style and Staff Nurse Job Satisfaction
In an article by Lucas (1991), the responses of nursing professionals to different types of management, and their preferences to the management style were recorded. The article begins with the thesis that the objective of any nursing practice environment is to foster the delivery of quality and cost-effective healthcare services. Lucas conducted the study with the objective of determining the management styles that are commonly used in hospitals and establish the link between job satisfaction and the management style in use. The findings from the study are relevant to various nursing-related professionals, including educators, researchers, and administrators. The study proposed a framework for nursing leaders to implement to come up with sustainable positive outcomes in the quality and efficacy of healthcare. The role of the management style on job satisfaction is linked closely to the perception that nurses have of the management style under application.
Lucas (1991) used a questionnaire as a research tool to explore nurses’ experiences of management styles in their work environment. Additionally, the management style was measured using a Likert scale designed to measure management style in terms of benevolent-authoritative, consultative, exploitative-authoritative, and participative leadership. The job satisfaction was conceptualized based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. While the results obtained by Lucas (1991) showed that nurses preferred participative leadership over other styles, they also showed some variance between individual nurses as a function of several factors. For instance, nurses who had been in the hospital for a longer period perceived the management style to be closer to participatory than other nurses.
The framework used by Lucas (1991) can be likened to that obtained through a study by Bae et al. (2014), in which the researchers aimed at determining the impacts of using temporary staffing on the prevalence of nosocomial infections in the ICU. In the findings shared by Bae et al., one aspect that stands out is the affirmation that “nurses’ perceptions of staffing adequacy were related to nosocomial infections.” This assertion confirms that it is not the inadequacy of nurses that result in nosocomial infections but rather the perceptions of the nurses. Bae et al. suggested that while it is controversial to use temporary staffs, “it increases nurse staffing levels.” However, the authors also register their concern about other implications of using temporary nursing staffs such as increasing costs of wages as the temporary staffs are paid higher than the regular staffs. Bae et al. used “central line associated blood stream infections and VAP” as measures of the rate of nosocomial infections and “nursing care hours provided by temporary staffs per day” as the measure of temporary staffing.
References
Bae, S.H., Brewer, C.S., Kelly, M. & Spencer, A. (2014). Use of temporary nursing staff and nosocomial infections in intensive care units. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24, 980-990.
Lucas, M.D. (1991). Management style and staff nurse job satisfaction. Journal of Professional Nursing, 7(2), 119-125.