Transformational leadership styles and its outcomes among nursing staff at Rwanda Military Hospital

Abstract

iv Background: Nursing is an active and demanding profession which needs satisfying and inspirational leaders. It was emphasized that leadership style is one of most factors which help the achievement of organizational goals and that nursing leadership has a key role in shaping nursing profession to be more reactive on today‟s changing healthcare system. Aim of the study: The aim of this study was to assess the level of transformational leadership style practice and its outcomes among nursing staff at Rwanda Military Hospital. Methodology: Quantitative approach and descriptive correlational design was used in this study, 146 staff nurse from different wards participated in the study, they were selected using stratified random sampling methods. Bass and Avolio‟s multifactor leadership questionnaire rater form was used to assess the use of transformational leadership style and its outcomes such as extra effort, effectiveness and satisfaction. The descriptive statistics and inferential statistics such as Pearson correlation with the statistical package for the social sciences version 21 was used to analyze the data. Study Findings: The study found that the transformational leadership style is used at 24.2 of low level, 43.8% of moderate level and 34.2% of high level and it found the outcomes of transformational leadership style at the following level: 17.1% of nurse managers had low level of effectiveness, 10.9% of nurse managers had moderate level of effectiveness and 62.3% of nurse managers had high level effectiveness; 24.6% of staff nurses had low level of extra effort, 17.1% of staff nurses had moderate level of extra effort and 58.2% of staff nurses had high level extra effort; 17.7% of staff nurses had low level of satisfaction, 19.1% of nurse managers had moderate level of satisfaction and 63% of staff nurse had high level satisfaction. The study found that transformational leadership style has very strong positive correlation with the outcomes variables where extra effort had (r=.856**at P-value of < 0.01), effectiveness had (r=.843**at P-value< 0.01), and satisfaction had (r=.767** at P-value< 0.01). Conclusion: There is a need to reinforce the use of transformational leadership style and to expand it to other Rwandan health care settings, in order to increase more effort from staff nurses, to boost their satisfaction and to be effective nurse managers which in turn will lead to quality nursing care as well as hospital performance.