The relationship between resilience and empowering leader behaviour of nurse managers in the mining healthcare sector

The South African mining healthcare sector faces injuries, illnesses including HIV and AIDS and high staff turnover rates. In this group, nurse managers need to create an optimal environment by motivating, influencing and empowering nurses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between nurse managers’ resilience and empowering leader behavior in this sector. The investigators used a quantitative, descriptive, and correlational design. Their study population comprises 31 nurse managers, 101 professional nurses, and 79 enrolled nurses, and 79 enrolled nursing auxiliaries. Two data collection instruments were used:  The Resilience Scale and the empowering Leadership Questionnaire.

Of the 31 nurse managers, 8 had a low level, 19 a moderate level and 4 a high level of resilience. Using a Hotelling’s t-test, the nurse managers in the low resilience group displayed lower empowering leadership behavior as perceived by their team member than did those in the high resilience group. The authors concluded that respondents with high resilience scores tended to have higher leader empowering behavior. A Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .95 was obtained for the Resilience Scale in this study.

Published in:  

Babalwa T, du Plessis E, Koen D, Ellis S. (2018). The relationship between resilience and empowering leader behavior of nurse managers in the mining healthcare sector. Curations, 41(1), a1775. https://doi.org/10.4102/curations.v41i1.1775.