Nurses' self-leadership skills -Retention at work

The research project (NurSe-Le 2024–2026) explores and promotes nurses’ self-leadership. Self-leadership skills are valuable in modern health care organizations that implement less top-down management and expect nurses, guided by their own internal motivations, to strive to achieve both personal and organizational goals. The purpose of the research project is to describe and explain the current state of nurses’ self-leadership skills, their relationships with professional autonomy, job satisfaction and job retention, as well as to describe the effectiveness of the self-leadership intervention implemented in the project.

Nurses’ self-leadership skills have been little studied. Self-leadership has a broad influence on one’s performance of one’s own work. Self-leadership focuses on the individual employee. Nurses proactively orient towards their optimal performance, stay motivated, and take responsibility for their actions. Self-leadership is often related to the amount of professional autonomy nurses have. Nurses with self-leadership skills find more meaning and joy in their work and have a stronger commitment to their employer.

The research project includes three sub-studies. The first sub-study is a cross-sectional study for nurses, the second sub-study is an interview study for both nurses and nurse leaders, and the third sub-study is an intervention study for nurses.