Leadership Behaviors of Nurse Administrators and Caring Behaviors of Staff Nurses at the Cagayan Valley Medical Center

Abstract

This study sought to describe the leadership behaviors of nurse
administrators as well as the staff nurses’ caring behaviors and to
compare the nurse administrators’ leadership behaviors as assessed by
themselves and by their staff nurses. Caring behaviors of staff nurses
were described according to profile variables. Leadership behaviors of
nurse administrators have been associated with the caring behaviors
of staff nurses. This descriptive correlational study was conducted in
a 500-bed capacity tertiary, teaching, training hospital, the Cagayan
Valley Medical Center, the 3rd largest hospital in the Philippines. All
53 nurse administrators and 89 regular staff nurses in this hospital
were the participants of the study. The Leadership Behavior Checklist
developed by Cornelius & Associates (2010) for nurse administrators
and the Caring Behaviors Inventory established by Wolf (1994) for staff
nurses were used as data gathering instruments of this study. Leadership
behaviors were very highly manifested by nurse administrators in all
dimensions as assessed by themselves, however, these manifestations
were not slightly concurred by staff nurses in some dimensions. The
leadership behavior of nurse administrators reflects high manifestation
of staff nurses caring behaviors. The caring behavior manifested by staff
nurses was not affected when the staff nurses were grouped according
to their profile variables. This study also provides further evidences
regarding perceptions of nurse administrators and staff nurses on the
leadership behaviors of their nurse administrators which demonstrate
agreements and disagreements on the different dimensions of
leadership behaviors.