Authentic Leadership, Work Engagement, and Job Stress Among Dental Nurses in Stomatological Hospitals, Guizhou Province, the People’s Republic of China
Keywords:
Job stress, Authentic leadership, Work engagement, Dental nurses, Stomatological hospitalsAbstract
Most dental nurses are under a great deal of job stress, yet increased job stress can lead to adverse consequences for health care systems, for example, reducing creativity, generating conflicts in the workplace, and causing job dissatisfaction and health problems among dental nurses. Therefore, reducing job stress among this group is a top priority for nursing administrators. This descriptive correlational study aimed to examine the level of job stress, and the relationships between authentic leadership, work engagement, and job stress among dental nurses in Guizhou province, the People’s Republic of China. The sample included 198 dental nurses from three stomatological hospitals selected using stratified random sampling. The Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), 9-Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9), and the Job Stress Questionnaire (JSQ) were applied, and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.98, 0.98, and 0.94, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Spearman’s rank-order correlation, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
The results of this study showed that:
1. Dental nurses’ overall job stress (M = 3.00, SD = 0.53), the dimension of workload (M = 3.14, SD = 0.77), and role conflict (M = 2.42, SD = 0.85) were at moderate levels, while role ambiguity (M = 2.28, SD = 0.91) and utilization of skills (M = 2.22, SD = 0.82) were at low levels.
2. Authentic leadership and work engagement had weak negative correlations with job stress (rs = -.22, p < .01; r = -.21, p < .01, respectively).
Nursing administrators should create strategies for improving the authentic leadership of head nurses and the work engagement of dental nurses to help reduce their job stress. As the relationships between authentic leadership, work engagement, and job stress were not strong, further studies need to be done to explore other factors influencing job stress to find more appropriate strategies in order to help lessen dental nurses’ job stress.
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