Aim: To assess and describe reviews of nursing leadership styles associated with organizational, staff and patient outcomes.Design: A systematic review of reviews.Methods: Reviews describing a search strategy and quality assessment. The review followed the PRISMA statement. Nine databases were searched in February 2022.Results: After screening 6992 records, 12 reviews were included reporting 85 outcomes for 17 relational, nine task‐oriented, five passive and five destructive leadership styles. Transformational leadership, which is one of the relational styles, was the most studied among all the styles. Of the outcomes, staff outcomes were the most reported, notably job satisfaction, and patient outcomes were less reported. Also, mediating factors between relational leadership styles and staff and patient outcomes were identified.Conclusion: Extensive research shows the beneficial impacts of relational leadership; however, destructive leadership research is lacking. Relational leadership styles should be conceptually assessed. More research is needed on how nurse leadership affects patients and organizations.

Aim: To explore how nurses perceived having a calling to nursing.Design: A mixed‐method study.Methods: Survey data collected in autumn 2020 and semi‐structured individual interview data collected in spring 2021. The 7925 survey respondents were care professionals and 414 of them were registered nurses. The 23 interview participants were registered nurses who responded to the survey. We examined the survey results using analysis of variance and t‐tests and the interview data with qualitative thematic analysis.Results: Registered nurses had a lower calling than other care professionals. Based on the interviews, having a calling to nursing produce four key findings. Nurses with a calling experienced their work as meaningful. They also adopted a humane and holistic approach to their work. However, their calling could change during their professional career. Due to its historical roots, having a calling was seen as a risk for the nursing profession, as it meant nurses had an oppressed position in society and nurses associated it with poor working conditions and low pay.Conclusion: Our study showed that having a calling to nursing had multidimensional benefits for the individual nurse, their patient, colleagues, organization and society, but showed strong association between calling and nurses' poor working conditions and low pay.Impact: We found that nurses had a lower calling than other care professionals. Calling still exists, but it can produce tension in modern nursing. Organizations and society need to focus on how calling can be seen as a more positive attribute of nursing and improve nurses' working conditions and pay.

Background. Nurses demonstrate high burnout prevalence. Moreover, destructive leadership, as well as job demands and resources, are associated with burnout. However, these associations, particularly in the context of nursing, warrant further investigation. Objective. To explore the associations of destructive leadership, as well as job demands and resources, with burnout in registered nurses. Design. A cross-sectional survey. Participants. 2115 registered nurses in Finland. Methods. The self-administered questionnaire survey was distributed nationwide to 106,000 members of the Finnish trade union for health and social care professionals via an online newsletter in February 2023. Nurses’ burnout was measured with the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT). The data were analysed through descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis. Results. Destructive leadership and job demands were positively associated with burnout (β = 0.39 and 0.32, respectively; both ), whereas job resources and burnout were negatively associated (β = −0.41, ). The associations of destructive leadership and job demands with burnout became less positive when job resources were added to the regression model (β = 0.21 and 0.14, respectively; both ). Conclusions. Job resources led to the greatest reduction in burnout among registered nurses. Moreover, job resources reduced burnout by diminishing the negative effects of destructive leadership and job demands. Providing a sufficient amount of job resources might reduce burnout and diminish the negative effects of destructive leadership and job demands among nurses. These relationships warrant examination in other cultural settings.

We aim to explore registered nurses' perceptions of their career. Career development options have been found to increase attraction to nursing and support nurses' engagement with their organization and profession. We collected qualitative individual interviews with 23 registered nurses; data were analysed with thematic analysis and reported according to the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) criteria. Three themes emerged: career choices, career engagement and career development. Participants had chosen a nursing career because they perceived it as humane, people oriented, meaningful, diverse and secure work. Participants' engagement in their career was connected to the content of the work, in which direct patient care was central. Nurses connected career development with high competency, independence, influence and meaningful working life experience. However, they perceived career development opportunities as minute within direct patient care. Career development opportunities for nurses in direct patient care are needed to foster their career engagement and the attractiveness of the nursing profession. Further research is needed on the career planning and development of nurses working in patient care. Nurse managers must play a central role in engaging nurses in their careers and promoting their competency and career planning and development in organizations.

Nursing is at risk of becoming precarious employment with low wages, poor working conditions, heavy workload and underdeveloped career development possibilities. This study aimed to explore employment precariousness, health and work well-being among permanent and temporary practical nurses and registered nurses. The data were collected from Finnish nurses ( n = 5867) using an online questionnaire in autumn 2020. This cross-sectional study was reported by applying the STROBE guidelines. Temporary nurses perceived their health and work well-being as being better than permanent nurses; however, they also perceived higher employment precariousness. Vulnerability, such as being treated in an authoritarian manner, had the strongest negative association with health and work well-being among permanent and temporary nurses. Practical nurses and registered nurses perceived employment precariousness in several dimensions, but this needs to be further studied because the results of this study are somewhat contradictory. Also, further studies are required to survey post-COVID-19 care work, as the pandemic likely affected the study, resulting in higher experiences of precariousness.