Prevalent Leadership Styles and their Compatibility to the New Ways of Working in General Hospitals in Nigeria

Abstract

Context: Hospital patients desire more flexibility in health care delivery, hence developing new ways of working (NWW), and making the leadership styles in these hospitals to be compatible will ensure this. Design: Prevailing leadership style and its compatibility to New Ways of Working were assessed by self-administered and pretested questionnaire. Descriptive statistics to elucidate on the demography of the respondents were done, mean score and standard deviation values were used to examine the variables. Spearman's rho correlation was used to identify the association in the responses. Setting/Participants: A stratified sampling method was used to select samples for this study, and these samples were surveyed for their views on the prevalent leadership styles and how this prevailing leadership style can accommodate NWW. Outcome measures: Some features of both task-oriented and person-centered leadership styles were identified. Then the respondents' agreement to the existence of these features of each leadership style and how NWW could be accommodated was examined. Results: 100 questionnaires were distributed, 81 (81%) of the questionnaires were returned. The mean score of the two leadership styles were 2.11 ± 1.11 and 2.16 ± 1.11 respectively with a significant correlation (r = 0.871, p < 0.001). The compatibility of prevalent leadership style to 'New Ways of Working' was 4.29 ± 1.74. Conclusion: Both task-oriented and person-centered leadership are present, and little adjustment are necessary for NWW to be accommodated. NWW will allow patients to overcome the encumbrances of busy schedules robbing them off an access to quality health care.