Modeling the relations of ethical leadership and clinical governance with psychological empowerment in nurses

Background: Ethical leadership appeared as a new approach in the leadership perspective and provided the ground for promoting individual and organizational efficiency by giving priorities to ethics in organizations. In this regard, the present study was conducted with the aim of modeling the relations of ethical leadership and clinical governance with psychological empowerment among nurses of public hospitals in Kermanshah in 2014.

Methods: the research method was descriptive survey. The study sample consisted of all nurses (n=550) working in public hospitals of Kermanshah University of Medical Science for whom 163 nurses were selected using simple random sampling. The tools for data collection were ethical leadership, clinical governance and psychology empowerment questionnaires whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results: The results showed a significant relationship between ethical leadership and clinical governance (P<0.01) and psychological empowerment (P<0.01). Moreover, there was a significant correlation between clinical governance and psychological empowerment (P<0.05). Based on the results of the research, ethical leadership directly and through clinical governance affected the nurses’ psychological empowerment (P<0.05).

Conclusion: reliance on ethics and ethical leadership in hospitals, in addition to providing the space and ground for improving the effectiveness of clinical governance approach, can promote the feeling of psychological empowerment in nurses. Accordingly, the ethical issues are required to be taken into consideration in hospitals.