Linking transformational leadership, patient safety culture and work engagement in home care services.

Siri Wiig,Eline Ree

doi:10.1002/nop2.386

Abstract

AimTo assess the relationship between transformational leadership, job demands, job resources, patient safety culture and work engagement in home care services.DesignCross‐sectional survey.MethodsHealthcare professionals in Norwegian home care services participated in the study (N = 139). Multiple regression analyses with patient safety culture and work engagement as outcomes and transformational leadership, job demands, job resources as predictors were conducted.ResultsThe transformational leadership model explained 35.7% of the variance in patient safety culture. Adding job demands and resources and work engagement to the model increased the explained variance to 53.5%. The job resource “skill utilization” was the strongest predictor of work engagement. The full model with all predictor variables explained 28.2% of work engagement.ConclusionTransformational leadership has a significant impact on patient safety culture and work engagement in home care services. Employees' perceptions of job demands, available resources and engagement also affect patient safety culture.

Highlights

We explore whether transformational leadership, job demands and job resources influence patient safety culture and work engagement in Norwegian home care services
Our study shows that job resources are more important for work engagement than transformational leadership, managers might have an indirect effect on work en‐ gagement through their impact on job demands and job resources, as suggested in a study by Schaufeli (2015)
This study found that transformational leadership behaviours has a significant impact on patient safety culture and work engagement in home care services

Summary

Introduction

We explore whether transformational leadership, job demands and job resources influence patient safety culture and work engagement in Norwegian home care services. The role of patient safety culture and leadership has been pinpointed as key chal‐ lenges in public inquiries into system failures that were allowed to develop over years and caused serious injury of death of numerous patients, as in the Mid staffordshire (Francis, 2013) and Bristol cases (Kennedy, 2001). The aftermath of these healthcare disasters has. Based on previous research and theory, the following hypotheses are postulated: Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership, job re‐ sources and work engagement are pos‐ itively related to patient safety culture, while job demand is negatively related to patient safety culture

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