Background and Significance: Canada’s population is aging (Statistics Canada, 2017), leading to an increase in demand for beds in long-term care (Gibbard, 2017). As such, an increasing number of nurses will be required to care for those living in long-term care (Hermus & Stonebridge, 2017). With this in mind, it is important to be knowledgeable about factors that influence the sustainability of the registered nursing workforce in this setting. For instance, understanding job satisfaction is important as it has been shown to impact long-term care nurses’ turnover intentions (Kuo, Lin, & Li, 2014). This is significant not only because of its impact on the number of available nurses but also because each case of nursing turnover in Canada costs approximately $25,000 (Duffield, Roche, Homer, Buchan, & Dimitrelis, 2014; O’Brien-Pallas, Tomblin Murphy, & Shamian, 2008). Managers’ leadership styles are known to be influential on nursing work environments and the nursing workforce (Cummings et al., 2018). Authentic leaders are self-aware, act morally and ethically, role model positive behaviours, and make decisions objectively (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005; Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). This relational leadership style has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes among nurses in acute care settings, such as higher satisfaction with work and healthier work environments; however, little is known about how this leadership style impacts nurses working in long-term care (Alilyyani, Wong, & Cummings, 2018).
Methods: This non-experimental, correlation study was a secondary analysis of time 1 (March 2013) survey data. A random sample of 1,410 registered nurses was obtained from Canadian nursing regulatory bodies. In the present study, a subsample of 78 frontline long-term care nurses was utilized. Standardized self-report questionnaires were mailed to nurses’ home addresses using a modified Dillman (2007) method. Data were analyzed using SPSS, with the hypothesized mediation model being tested using an SPSS macro called PROCESS (Hayes, 2018).
Results: Overall, authentic leadership, areas of worklife fit, and emotional exhaustion accounted for 61.3% of the variance in job satisfaction. Findings revealed that authentic leadership had a significant direct effect on job satisfaction as well as a significant indirect effect through areas of worklife fit and emotional exhaustion.
Conclusions and Implications: These findings add to the body of research showing that authentic leadership is a leadership style that can change nurse outcomes in a positive way. Furthermore, this study provides early support for authentic leadership in long-term care. Going forward, healthcare administrators should consider using authentic leadership as a framework to guide the hiring, training, and evaluation of managers. Additionally, these findings may help inform strategies aimed at promoting a sustainable nursing workforce in long-term care.