The Relationship of Leadership Style and Horizontal Violence to Emergency Department Staff Nurse Retention

This study was a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional national survey that examined the relationship between leadership style of the nurse manager (NM) and horizontal violence (HV) and the impact of that relationship on staff nurse turnover in the emergency department. The study examined which leadership style of the nurse manager influenced the presence of horizontal violence and whether there was a relationship on anticipated staff nurse turnover int eh emergency department. Postal mail communication methods were used to petition participation in the online survey. Three thousand surveys were mailed to registered nurse members from the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA). An on-line, self-administered questionnaire comprised of demographic questions, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (5X) (Avolio and Bass, 2004), the Sabotage Savvy Survey (Briles, 2003), and the Anticipated Turnover Scale (Hinshaw and Atwood, 1982) were used as the instrument to collect data. The framework for the study was based on the Transformational Leadership theory of Bass (1990) and Burns (1978). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures for mean scores of Anticipated Turnover Scale by demographic variables was conducted to determine relationships among variables. Pearson correlation study comparing nurse manager leadership styles with horizontal violence and anticipated turnover were conducted. Regression analyses were performed to identify predictions regarding the leadership style of the nurse manager and horizontal violence as well as anticipated turnover. The findings of the study found that non-statistically significant correlation between the transformational leadership style of the nurse manager and the staff nurse\u27s experience of being a victim of horizontal violence. The second finding was a moderately strong correlation between the transformational leadership style of the nurse manager and anticipated turnover in staff nurses in the emergency department, indicating as the presence of transformational leadership style was present anticipated turnover was less. A path analyses was conducted and demonstrated an indirect effect or partial mediational effect for being a victim of horizontal violence on the relationship of transformational leadership style of the nurse manager and anticipated likelihood of job turnover in the emergency department