The self‐organizing map clustered registered nurses’ evaluations of their nurse leaders

Abstract

Aim To characterize registered nurses’ (RNs’) perceptions of nurse leaders’ transformational leadership (TL) qualities in Finnish university hospitals and identify predictors of positive and negative evaluations. Background Transformational leadership can improve health care but requires development. Information on TL is typically derived from survey results, which are vulnerable to confounders. Method Cross‐sectional survey. Registered nurses’ perceptions of nurse leaders were measured with the TL scale. Kohonen's self‐organizing map was used to cluster the data based on RNs’ opinions and questionnaire items. Logistic regression explained background characteristics’ effects on cluster formation. Results A total of 1,970 RNs participated and evaluated their nurse leaders’ TL qualities as moderate. Giving feedback and rewarding clustered separately from other TL qualities. Females and permanent workers evaluated nurse managers more negatively but nurse directors positively. Positive perceptions of nurse managers’ TL predicted better TL among nurse directors. Vice nurse managers gave the most positive evaluations. A total of 197 RNs had no opinions about nurse directors’ TL. Conclusions Registered nurses evaluated nurse managers’ TL qualities as moderate and were unfamiliar with nurse directors. Background characteristics affecting evaluations differed between leader types. Implications for Nursing Management Giving feedback and rewarding should be more closely associated with other TL qualities. Transformational leadership requires transformational approaches from both nurse managers and directors.

Professional governance in Finnish nursing – measured by the Index of Professional Nursing Governance

“…or other northern countries. Earlier studies showed that nursing personnel in Finland regard managers' transformational leadership qualities as moderate and their nurse directors as distant (5,6,7). The overall governance score in this study (203.6) places decision-making in the included hospitals within the PG spectrum (173-344) and roughly half or more of nearly all the included groups of nursing personnel felt that they had influence in nursing decisions.…”

“…The results indicate that nursing personnel have access to information, influence over resources supporting their practice, control over their practice and ability to both set goals and resolve conflicts. This is encouraging for Finnish health care as a whole, and specifically the included university hospitals, which are actively developing their management style while pursuing Magnet status (7).…”

“…Previous studies have also shown that nursing personnel in Finland are likely to be dissatisfied with the nursing process and their ability to obtain feedback from their nurse leaders. They also reportedly regard their managers' transformational leadership qualities as moderate and their nurse directors as distant (6,5,7).…”

Job satisfaction and generational nursing characteristics among registered nurses in the United States, Italy and Finland: Results of a survey study

“…The working environment, physical and human resources, demands of work and structural dimensions including compensation, empowerment and schedule flexibility impact job satisfaction (Seitovirta et al, 2018; Yasin et al, 2020). Leadership is positively linked to job satisfaction (T. Kvist et al, 2012), particularly where leadership is transformational (Asif et al, 2019; T. Kvist et al, 2019; Morsiani et al, 2017). Leaders influence job satisfaction through organizational measures such as staffing (Al Sabei et al, 2020; Dilig‐Ruiz et al, 2018), empowerment (Asif et al, 2019; H. Li et al, 2018;), autonomy (Castaneda & Scanlan, 2014), decision‐making ability (T. Ylitörmänen et al, 2018), the ability to practice within one's full scope (Déry et al, 2018) and delivering quality patient care (Al Sabei et al, 2020; Asif et al, 2019).…”

Intelligent Data Analysis in Biomedical Research: Artificial Neural Networks

“…На сегодняшний день в медицинских исследованиях применяются нейронные сети разнообразной структуры. Используются нейросетевые самоорганизующиеся карты Кохонена [12,14, 24], сверточные нейронные сети [15,20,25], рекурентные нейронные сети [11,13,19], но классическим представителем такого рода моделей является многослойный перцептрон -полносвязная многослойная искусственная нейронная сеть прямого распространения [16,17,21].В отечественной биомедицинской литературе примеры применения нейронных сетей приведены при…”