Investigation of the Relationship Between the Level of Compassion of the Greek Official Nurses with their Leading Style

Introduction: Compassion is now considered a necessary skill in order nurse to provide proper and effective care to patients. Officers, in their dual capacity as military and nurses, often lead teams that aim to improve patients' health, so exploring the impact of their leadership style on their level of compassion is a field worth studying. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation of the compassion level of Greek Nursing Officers with their own leadership style and their demographic - professional characteristics. Material and Method: This is a synchronous quantitative study carried out from December 2019 to May 2020 with the method of convenience sampling. The study involved 235 Nursing Officers of the Greek Military Hospitals. A single questionnaire containing Socio-demographic data, Compassion at Work Questionnaire, Compassion Ability Questionnaire and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X) was used for data collection. A total of 400 printed questionnaires were distributed with a response rate of 58.75%. Data analysis was performed using the statistical package SPSS 22.0. Results: The research showed that the transformative and the transactional leadership style coexist in the Nursing Service of the Armed Forces with an average value of 2.72(SD=0,70)-2.95(SD=0,54) points and 2.47(SD=0,69)-2.74(SD=0,63) points respectively, while the passive style possessed very small percentage with an average value in the subscales of 0.88(SD=0,61)-0.94(SD=0,63) points. It was also found that compassion at work and compassion improved as the characteristics of the transformational or transactional leadership style increased and the better the results of leadership, while decreasing as the characteristics of the passive leadership style decreased. Specifically, higher score in the «Intellectual Stimulation» scale were associated with more compassion at work in the dimension «Being alive to the suffering of others» (p=0.010), while higher values on the scale «Laissez-Faire» were associated with less compassion at work in the dimension higher dimension (p<0.001). Higher score in the «Contingent Reward» scale were associated with more compassion at work in the dimension «Takes appropriate action» (p=0.023). Furthermore, higher values on the scales «Inspirational Motivation», «Individual Consideration» and «Extra Effort» were associated with more communication ability (p=0.035, p=0.022 and p=0.042 accordingly). Higher score in the «Effectiveness» scale were associated with higher sensitivity (p=0.049). Conclusions: Teaching appropriate leadership behavior, promoting a culture of compassion and continuing to train nurses to manage their emotions should be included in the infrastructure of the nursing science.

Category: Volume 60, N 4
Hits: 742 Hits
Created Date: 09-03-2022
Authors: Thomai Klimentidou , Pavlos Sarafis , Ioannis Apostolakis , Maria Malliarou