Ethical Leadership to Promote Healthy Work Environments: The Mediating Role of Work–Home Conflicts on Errors, Turnover Intention, and Nurses’ Health in a Structural Equation Model

Background: Healthcare environments are among the most stressful workplaces, exposing nurses to long shifts, understaffing, and high emotional demands. These factors increase the likelihood of work–family conflict (WFC), which has been linked to reduced job performance, increased errors, turnover intention, and compromised physical and mental health. Despite growing interest in the effects of ethical leadership on organizational outcomes, few studies have examined its role in promoting nurses’ well-being through the reduction of WFC. Ethical leadership, characterized by fairness, support, and integrity, may represent a low-cost, modifiable organizational factor capable of fostering healthy work environments, mitigating WFC, and enhancing care quality. However, the mechanisms through which ethical leadership influences nurses’ health and job outcomes—particularly through the mediation of WFC—remain underexplored. Integrating ethical leadership and WFC into a single theoretical model may offer a deeper understanding of how leadership styles affect nurse retention, safety, and health. Objectives: To examine the impact of ethical leadership on nurses’ self-reported errors, turnover intention, and physical and mental health, by analyzing the mediating role of work–family conflict.