Nursing leadership to facilitate patient participation in fundamental care: An ethnographic qualitative study

To explore and describe hospital nurses' perceptions of leadership behaviours in facilitating patient participation in fundamental care.

An ethnographic interview study.

Individual semi-structured interviews with 12 nurses with a bachelor's or master's degree working at a university medical centre were conducted between February and April 2021. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Six themes were derived from the data: (1) nursing leadership; (2) patient participation; (3) using patients' preferences; (4) building relationships; (5) task-focused nursing; (6) need for role modelling.

Nurses indicated leadership behaviour to facilitate patient participation in fundamental care as inviting patients to participate and eliciting and supporting patients' preferences. Although nurses also regarded leadership as motivating colleagues to act and enhancing evidence-based practice, they appeared not to practise this themselves about patient participation. Role modelling was indicated as a need for improvement.

The findings established that not all leadership behaviours mentioned were used in practice about patient participation in fundamental care. Role modelling and the use of evidence-based practice are needed to increase patient participation. Further research will be necessary to develop and test leadership interventions to improve patient participation in fundamental care.