Curbing nurses' burnout during COVID‐19: The roles of servant leadership and psychological safety

Abstract

Aims This study examines the role of servant leadership through the mechanism of psychological safety in curbing nurses' burnout during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Background During the COVID‐19 pandemic, studies have shown an increased level of stress and burnout among health care workers, especially nurses. This study responds to the call for research to explore the mechanisms of servant leadership in predicting nurses' burnout by employing the perspective of conservation of resources theory. Methods Through a cross‐sectional quantitative research design, data were collected in three waves from 443 nurses working in Pakistan's five public sector hospitals. Data were analysed by employing the partial least squares path modelling (PLS‐PM) technique. Results Servant leadership (β = −0.318; 95% CI = 0.225, 0.416) and psychological safety (β = −0.342; CI = 0.143, 0.350) have an inverse relationship with nurses' burnout and explain 63.1% variance. Conclusions Servant leadership significantly reduces nurses' burnout, and psychological safety mediates this relationship. Implications for Nursing Management Human resource management policies in health care must emphasize training nursing leaders in servant leadership behaviour.

Effect of workplace infection control practices on workers’ psychological distress: a large-scale cohort study during the COVID-19 second state of emergency in Japan

“…26 Psychological safety is defined as individuals' perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in their working place, 27 and has been shown to improve work performance, information sharing, and learning in the workplace. 28 In addition to the above, it has also been reported to be useful in preventing the deterioration of workers' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic 29 -a finding that is consistent with our view. This study suggests that infection control practices at the working place are expected to reduce the prevalence of COVID-19 infections and are also beneficial to the workers' mental health.…”

Human Resource Management in Crisis Situations: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Social, psychological, and preventive rewards were mentioned as good measures, as well as the importance of support from nursing leaders. In other instances, pandemic-related training and support were helpful to prevent infections, and servant and shared leadership was claimed to reduce burnout and psychological safety [27,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65].…”

The impact of perceived servant leadership traits and safety climate on task performance and risk-taking behavior in times of crisis

“…In crisis times, researchers have argued that servant leadership seems to be a promising leadership approach in managing health-care professionals (Jimenez et al, 2021;Ma et al, 2021). For instance, Jimenez et al (2021) indicated that the aspects of servant leadership such as empowering, caring, listening and behaving ethically are of utmost importance in the health-care sector in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…For instance, Jimenez et al (2021) indicated that the aspects of servant leadership such as empowering, caring, listening and behaving ethically are of utmost importance in the health-care sector in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Ma et al (2021) called for the adoption of servant leadership in crisis times because it demonstrates to reduce nurses' burnout in Pakistani hospitals during the pandemic. Given these results, we argue that servant leadership in a crisis context may positively contribute to task performance for the following reasons.…”

“…Nevertheless, other leadership types, such as servant leadership, have been ignored in the literature on leadership in crisis times. With the exceptions of few works (Jimenez et al , 2021; Ma et al , 2021; Firestone, 2020; Wankhade et al , 2015), studies on servant leadership and its impacts on employee outcomes in times of crisis are somehow few in number.…”