Nurse Managers' Perceptions Related to Their Leadership Styles, Knowledge, and Skills in These Areas—A Viewpoint: Case of Health Centre Wards in Finland

The purpose of this study was to explore nurse managers’ perceptions related to their leadership styles, knowledge, and their skills in these areas in health centre wards in Finland. The data were collected from nurse managers ( ) in health centre hospitals in Finland using a structured questionnaire (response rate 63%). Six leadership styles—visionary, coaching, affiliate, democratic, commanding, and isolating—were reflected on. Almost all respondents in every age group considered four leadership styles—visionary, coaching, affiliate, and democratic—to be very important or important. Nurse managers estimated their knowledge and skills in leadership styles to be essentially fairly sufficient or sufficient. Nurse managers’ abilities to reflect, understand, and, if necessary, change their leadership style influence the work unit’s success and employees’ job satisfaction. Nurse managers, especially new nurse managers, need more theoretic, evidence-based education to cope with these expectations and to develop their professional abilities. Together with universities, health care organizations should start planning nurse manager education programmes that focus on strategic issues, leadership, job satisfaction, challenging situations in leadership, change management, work unit management (e.g., economy, efficiency, and resources), and how the nurse managers consider their own wellbeing. 1. Introduction In many European countries, the public health care system is facing challenges, such as problems in recruiting professionals [1, 2] and staff retention [3]. The situation in Finland is similar. One of the major challenges in Finland is how to secure adequate, trained personnel. The proportion of persons aged over 65 in the Finnish population is estimated to rise from 17 percent to 27 percent by 2040 [4]. Shortage of staff is an imminent threat: 22.5 percent of the employees in social and health care will reach the age of 67 by 2020 at the latest. Most of them will retire at that time, or even earlier [5]. At the same time, 26 percent of young Finnish nurses have often thought of leaving their profession [6]. Nurses’ work in health centre wards is physically and mentally burdensome; consequently, nurse manager’s leadership skills have a key role in influencing nurses’ job satisfaction and their staying on in a work unit [7, 8]. An essential part of leadership skills is the use of different leadership styles [9–11]. Leadership styles can be seen as different combinations of tasks and transaction behaviours that influence people in achieving goals [12]. This paper