Leadership style and culturally competent care: Nurse leaders’ views of their practice in the multicultural care settings of the United Arab Emirates

Abstract It is well recognised that nurse leader managers play an important role in facilitating the quality and nature of hospital care, the improvement of work performance and work satisfaction. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) they face the additional challenge of working within a context of significant linguistic and cultural diversity where leadership in the provision of culturally competent care is a major requirement. With this goal at the fore, a sample of 153 nurse-leader-managers, including matrons, nursing directors, supervisors, nurses-in-charge and in-service education staff from four private and six government hospitals completed the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass & Avolio, 2004). The survey also explored participants' perceptions of the characteristics of good leaders and what they needed to do in their particular work place to enhance culturally competent care. The results showed nurseleader-managers used both transformational and transactional leadership attributes but in different combinations across the two hospital types.