Physician leadership style predicts advanced practice provider job satisfaction

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between physician leadership style and advanced practice health-care provider job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach A total of 320 advanced practice providers (nurse practitioners and physician assistants) in Texas rated their supervising/collaborating physicians’ leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X Short (Bass and Avolio, 2000) and assessed their own job satisfaction using the Abridged Job Descriptive Index (Smith, Kendall and Hulin, 1969). Regression models tested the relationships between physician leadership styles and several facets of job satisfaction of advanced practice providers while controlling for advanced practice provider age, gender, ethnicity, years of experience, salary level, clinical practice setting, level of physician supervision/collaboration and advanced practice provider type. Findings The results demonstrated that physician transformational leadership accounted for between 4.4 and 49.1 per cent of the variance in job satisfaction depending on the aspect of job satisfaction. Satisfaction with job supervision and satisfaction with job in general were those in which transformational leadership was found to have the most impact, explaining 49.1 and 15.5%, respectively. Demographic variables such as advanced practice provider type, age, years of experience and number of hours per week of physician collaboration/supervision had small but statistically significant associations with job satisfaction. Practical implications Recommendations for physician leadership development focusing on transformational leadership as a way to increase the satisfaction among other providers on health-care teams are discussed. Originality/value This paper examines the impact of supervising/delegating physician leadership style on other nonphysician members of the health-care team, specifically advanced practice health-care providers.