Factors affecting staff nurses’ leadership aspiration in selected private and public hospitals in Iloilo

Abstract

This descriptive-correlational study was conducted to determine the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics, organizational culture, experience of leadership behaviors and leadership aspirations of nurses and their relationship in selected private and public hospitals in Iloilo. Specifically, it tried to describe the sociodemographic profile of staff nurses in terms of age, sex, civil status, educational attainment and length of experience. It also tried to determine the organizational factors present in the hospital in terms of organizational communication and organizational support as well as the staff nurses’ personal experience with performing leadership roles in terms of mentoring and role modeling. It also sought to determine whether there was a relationship between the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents and their perception of certain organizational factors, experiences with performing leadership roles and leadership aspiration. Furthermore, it tried to determine whether there was a relationship between the perceived organizational factors and leadership aspiration as well as between experiences with performing leadership roles and leadership aspiration. This study involved 114 nurses who were working in selected private and public hospitals in Iloilo. Data were gathered using a validated researcher-made questionnaire and was processed through SPSS 20 software. Frequency distribution was used to describe respondents’ work-related characteristics. Gamma and Cramer’s V tests were used to determine the significance of the relationship between each of the sociodemographic characteristics, organizational communication, organizational support, mentoring experience, role modeling experience and leadership aspiration. The data gathering instrument used for this study was a researcher made questionnaire and analysis of data involved the use of both descriptive and inferential statistical tools. The findings of this study revealed that majority of the staff nurses from the selected hospitals were young (ages 22 - 30), female, single, holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree and worked for less than 6 years. As to the organizational factors, majority of the staff nurses perceived only a moderate organizational communication in their hospital while almost half of the staff nurses perceived strong organizational support from the hospital management. On the experience with leadership roles, more than half of the staff nurses had high mentoring experience, while a little more than half of them had a high role modeling experience. More than half of the staff nurses had moderate leadership aspiration indicating that not all of them aspire for a leadership position. As for the relationship between sociodemographic factors with organizational factors it was found that age and length of experience are related to organizational communication while age, educational attainment and length of experience were related with organizational support. Moreover, among the sociodemographic factors, only length of experience has a relationship with mentoring experience, while age and length of experience has a relationship with role modeling experience. Only educational attainment has a relationship with leadership aspiration. Perceived organizational support of the staff nurses has a weak association with their leadership aspiration.