Abstract Background: The healthcare environment, particularly among nurses, increasingly faces significant challenges, including the need for strong and effective leadership. Clinical leadership is essential for improving patient outcomes, enhancing teamwork, and ensuring efficient healthcare delivery. This study aimed to assess clinical leadership skills among registered nurses working in the neuro units of a tertiary hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional research design was adopted. Data were collected from 81 registered nurses using a structured leadership assessment tool that measured five core categories: demonstrating personal qualities, working with others, duty management, setting directions, and making decisions. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 25, employing descriptive statistics, reliability testing, and non-parametric tests to explore correlations between leadership skills and demographic variables. Results: The results revealed that duty management had the highest percentage of nurses rated as excellent (63.0%), indicating strong competencies in operational management and task prioritization. Similarly, 60.5% were rated excellent in working with others, reflecting strong teamwork and interpersonal skills. Over half of the participants (53.1%) scored excellent in setting directions and making decisions, demonstrating strategic thinking and sound decision-making abilities, although some nurses required further development in this area. Demonstrating personal qualities showed a near-equal distribution between good (49.4%) and excellent (48.1%), indicating overall self-awareness and resilience. The overall leadership ability averaged 59.3% at an excellent level, with only a small number of nurses requiring improvement. The leadership skills scale demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.943). No significant correlations were found between leadership skills and demographic factors such as age, gender, education, or nationality, except for the shift leadership role, which significantly correlated with higher duty management scores (p = 0.022). Conclusion: This study highlights strong leadership capabilities among registered nurses, with decision-making and personal development identified as key areas for targeted growth. Structured leadership programs are recommended to further enhance nursing leadership performance and improve patient care outcomes.
Jayachandra et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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