The Relationship between Professional Nursing Governance and Head nurses' Leadership Competencies

Background: Effective professional nursing governance supports continuous nursing development through training and education. This development is crucial for building leadership competencies, and enabling nurses to adapt to changing healthcare environments and take on leadership roles. Aim: To investigate the relationship between professional nursing governance and head nurses' leadership competencies at Shoubrakhit General Hospital. Design: A descriptive, correlational research design was used to conduct this study. Setting: The study was conducted at Shoubrakhit General Hospital, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Health and Population, with bed capacity (n=200) beds included all Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and inpatient care units (medical and surgical). Subjects: two groups were included; all head nurses and their assistants (n=26), and Staff nurses were randomly selected (n=230), who were working in previously mentioned settings and who were available at the time of data collection. Tools: two tools were used. Tool one: Index of Professional Nursing Governance. Tool two: Leadership Competency Assessment Scale. Results: There were low level scores of total professional nursing governance and nearly two-thirds of the studied subjects got high scores of traditional nursing governance while the studied subject had a moderate level scores of total perception of head nurses' leadership competencies. Conclusion: There were highly positive statistical significant correlation between total professional nursing governance and total leadership competencies of head nurses. Recommendations: Hospital administrators should adopt and implement one of shared governance model to support nursing practice and improve patients' care quality through strengthening leadership competencies, and communication skills and empowering nursing staff to acquire strong work experience.