الإصدار 4 - العدد 12 (2026-03-20)

Leadership style of the nursing director in achieving professional nursing competence among nurses working in government hospitals in the Gaza governorates

Dr: Esam Sade Abed Nabhan

Director of the Nursing Department at Al-Nasser Children’s Hospital

Background: Leadership style is one of the critical issues in stimulating professionalism ‎behavior and ‎prepare it to meet the new changes in the working environment or the ‎implementation of ‎roles and tasks according to the standards of quality and excellence.

Objective: To assess role of nursing manager leadership style ‎in ‎achieving the nursing professionalism ‎ among nurses working at governmental hospitals in Palestine

Methods: This study used a cross-sectional, descriptive, analytical design and was conducted between Jun. 2022 and Apr. 23. After getting ethical approvals, study targeted the nurses in major governmental hospitals, where target population is classified into two groups: the first group was Nursing Manager (NM) which included head nurses and nursing supervisors and the second group was subordinate nurse (SN). All NM were included in the study (263) and random sample was selected for the SN group (378). The response rate for NM was 91.3% and for the SN it was 92.6%. The researcher developed questionnaire for both NM and SN to reflect the reality of leadership Style for NM and their impact in achieving the professionalism for SN. The questionnaire included: socio-demographic variable, organizational variable and study domains.

Results: Most of the sample were Male, they were representing 67.3% of male and 32.7% were female. the age group up to 30 years about 46.6% in SN, but in NM most of the age group more than 31 years. About 88.30% of respondents were married, highest participation from Gaza Governorate, while lowest participation from Rafah governorate. Regarding academic qualifications about 68.6% from SN were getting bachelor degree. While NM that most of them from bachelor 63.3% and 33.3% have postgraduate. According to the years of experience the majority of SN 62.3% had work experience less than 10 years, while NM about 54.1% of the supervisors were having experience from 11-20 years and 35.5% of them had experience more than 21 years. The prevalent leadership style practice by nursing supervisors and head nurse is the” Transactional leadership” with a weighted mean of 74.5%.   the relationship between nursing manager leadership style ‎and nursing professionalism, the research used liner regression. Results showed that the independent variables (Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership, Participatory Leadership) have a significant impact on nursing professionalism, (P-Value<0.05), and the coefficient of determination is equal to 0.827, which means that 82.7% of the change in the nursing professionalism can be explained by the change in nursing manager leadership style. The relationship between nursing manager leadership style, professionalism and socio-demographic variables, there is no relationship between socio-demographic variables and this variable.

Recommendation: The researcher recommends Enhance the nursing work environment by practicing appropriate leadership styles and empowering strategies, including greater participation of nursing staff in the decision-making process. Ultimately, more effective nursing management should result in improved nursing staff creativity, job satisfaction, and work commitment all that can led to professionalism.