The influence of nurse leadership style on the culture of patient safety incident reporting: a systematic review

Evidence suggests that incidents related to patient safety and medical error often go under reported in hospitals worldwide. This study reviewed the literature regarding the prevalence of patient safety incident reporting and how different styles of leadership affected healthcare staff’s willingness and intention to report medical errors. A total of five studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. Analysis showed that staff are generally hesitant to report patient safety incidents. The studies also identified three types of leadership: transformational, transactional and coaching. Four of the five studies discussed transformational leadership, of which three found a positive association between this leadership style and increased patient safety incident reporting. Coaching was also found to be an effective leadership style, although transactional leadership was found to be ineffective in increasing patient safety incident reporting. Overall, intervention is needed to overcome barriers to error reporting in hospitals, with further study required to identify the optimal leadership behaviours to facilitate this.