United States Air Force Nurse Corps Captains' Perceived Leadership Effectiveness

OBJECTIVE
To examine perceived leadership effectiveness of nurses who attended the U.S. Nursing Service Management residence course with those who lacked this training.

METHODOLOGY
Target population consisted of 411 active-duty USAFNC Captains with management experience stationed throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. With a 70% response rate, the sample size was 279. Eighty-three percent of the respondents were female, and two-thirds were between the ages of 31 and 40. Forty-size percent had 8-12 years of experience as an USAF nurse, and another 43% had 5-8 years of experience. Over half the respondents were nurse managers (57%) and 35% were assistant nurse managers. Forty-six percent had attended the Nursing Service Management residence course. In addition to providing demographic information, respondents completed the LPI.

KEY FINDINGS
There were no statistically significant differences on any of the five leadership practices between those nurses who had or had not attended the Nursing Service Management residence program. This was also true in comparing nurses completion, or not, of the Nursing Service Fundamentals correspondence course. In addition, no significant differences among groups were found between the five leadership practices and the demographic variables of age, enlistment, education, AFNC years, supervisory experience, SOS residence or correspondence course, and the Flight Nurse course. The author suggests that because leadership training is ongoing throughout an officer's career, and received from many different sources, trying to detect differences based upon one particular course "may be nearly impossible" (p.42).

Females scored significantly higher than males on Challenging, Inspiring, and Encouraging. Nurse managers scored significantly higher than assistant nurse managers on Challenging, Enabling, Modeling, and Encouraging. Those with more years of work experience (13+ years) scored higher than those with a moderate numbers of years of work experience (5-8 years) on Inspiring.