Head Nurses' Leadership Effectiveness, Communication Skills and Mindfulness: It's' Relation to Staff Nurses' Innovative Work Behavior

Abstract

Background: In today’s quickly evolving environment of healthcare, increase need for effective nurse leader in order to achieve qualified care results, an equally compatible leadership standard in teamwork is fundamental. Mindfulness, with inherent focus on being present and non-judgmental, seems particularly suitable for enhancing leadership qualities and promoting the quality of communication skills, and enhance attractive and supportive work environment that is critical to innovation for staff. The study aimed to: Assess the head nurses' leadership effectiveness, communication skills and mindfulness and assessing its relation to innovative work behaviors among staff nurses. Design: A descriptive correlational design was utilized to conduct this study. Setting: the study was conducted in all units at Benha University Hospitals. Subjects: Consisted of head nurses group: 150 head nurses and their assistance and staff nurses group: A convenient sample of 300 staff nurses. Tools: Four tools were used for data collection; first: Leadership Effectiveness Questionnaire, second: Communication Skills Questionnaire third: Mindfulness Questionnaire, and the fourth tool: Innovative Work Behavior Questionnaire. Results: Showed that the highest percentage (61.5%) of head nurses had good communication skills, also more than half (54.9% & 52.6%) of them had high perception levels toward leadership effectiveness and mindfulness respectively. in addition to about two thirty (72%) of staff nurses had high perceptions level toward innovative work behaviors. Additionally the highest mean percentages (83.81%, 83.33%, and 80.08%) of head nurses were related to relational leadership effectiveness, creating a clear, well-crafted message of communication skills, the acceptance of mindfulness respectively, and the highest mean percentages (84.67% & 82%) of staff nurses were related to idea championing and idea implementation/starting activities of innovative work behaviors respectively. Conclusions: The study concluded that there were highly statistically significant positive correlation among head Nurses' leadership effectiveness, communication skills, mindfulness, and staff Nurses' innovative work behavior. Recommendations: Selection of head nurses to be effective leaders must be based upon combination of many factors such as level of education and management skills not only upon the years of experience, and creating innovation as a job requirement.