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Mindful leadership at healthcare system (Doctoral thesis)

Νταφοπούλου, Χρυσάνθη/ Ntafopoulou, Chrysanthi

Effective leadership can contribute to better management of human resources so as to ensure the best possible provision of health services to patients. The application of mindfulness on a level administration of hospital organizations contributes to effective leadership as, has beneficial effects in dealing with complex situations from leaders and workers, which leads to the reduction of errors, the increasethe efficiency and well-being of the respective organization.Aim: The investigation of the dominant leadership style and its level of mindfulness among the high-ranking officials of its military hospitals in Greece. Additional aims are to investigate the correlation between mindfulness with leadership style and leadership outcome and the effect of demographic characteristics.Methodology: The present study is multicenter, quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive, and correlational, in which measurement scales were used for data collection and multiple methods of data analysis. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was used to investigate leadership style and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) was used to measure mindfulness. The sample consisted of executives who are in leadership positions (commander, deputy commander, manager, deputy director, head of department) of the medical, nursing, and administrative staff of military hospitals. The statistical analysis of the data was done with IBM SPSS version 26.Results: 381 people participated (83.1% response rate). The middle age of the participants was 44 years. The majority of participants were women (56%), married (70%), and university graduates (46%). The average length of service was 15 years and the average length of service in their current position for 4 years. The results show that the dominant leadership styles are transformational and transactional. A positive correlation was observed between transformational and transactional leadership styles with the leadership outcome. Mindfulness was low to moderately positively correlated with all MLQ subscales, except passive leadership subscales which were low to moderately negatively correlated. Also, the participants show a high rate of mindfulness with women, medical and administrative staff displaying the highest. The factors of gender, professional category, age, and experience in the hospital influence mindfulness significantly.Conclusions: The results of the study contribute to the development of knowledge about mindful leadership and can be used as the basis for developing guidelines or creating programs of mindful leadership adapted to the needs of military hospitals. Useful information is offered to effectively exercise leadership and hospital administration, enriching the limited Greek and scholarly literature around the specific concepts.