Investigation of the relationship between servant leadership, psychological staff empowerment and creative problem solving skills in nurses

The purpose of this study is to determine nurses' perceptions of servant leadership, psychological staff empowerment and creative problem-solving skills according to descriptive characteristics and to reveal the relationship between them. The scope of the research consisted of nurses working in a university hospital in Mersin province. A questionnaire was created to collect data from nurses regarding servant leadership, psychological staff empowerment, creative problem-solving skills and descriptive characteristics. For assessing servant leadership characteristics, the Servant Leadership Scale, developed by Liden (2013) and adapted into Turkish by Kılıç and Aydın (2016), which comoprises a single dimension and seven items was used. The Psychological Staff Empowerment Scale, consisting of four subdimensions and 12 items, developed by Sprietzer (1995) and adapted to Turkish by Üner and Turan (2010), was used to reveal the psychological staff empowerment characteristics of nurses. The Creative Problem Solving Skills Scale, consisting of three dimensions and 24 items, developed by Basadur and Hausdorf (1996) and adapted to Turkish by Bekdaş (2021), was used for the creative problem solving skills of the participants. For the descriptive characteristics of the participants, personal questions were prepared by making use of the literature. SPSS 27 licensed package program was used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that there were positive and significant relationships between nurses' servant leadership, psychological staff empowerment and creative problem solving skills. In addition, it was observed that there were significant differences in nurses' servant leadership, psychological staff empowerment and creative problem solving skills perceptions according to descriptive characteristics. In light of these findings, it is recommended that nurse managers exhibit supportive and empowering behaviors toward their subordinates to enhance nurses' psychological empowerment, foster service-oriented leadership behaviors, and promote creative problem-solving.