Is Servant Leadership Useful for Sustainable Nordic Health Care?

The philosophy of servant leadership receives a growing interest in academia and among clinical health care leaders. Few European studies are available about the importance of this philosophy for patient and staff outcomes. Prior nursing studies in the US show that servant leadership is related to job satisfaction and better performance. For the purpose of investigating this among Nordic health care workers a questionnaire survey was conducted among health care staff in nursing care in four hospitals in Iceland (n=138). A new Dutch instrument (SLS) was used in an Icelandic version. The study shows that servant leadership is practiced in departments of nursing in these Icelandic hospitals and significant correlation was found between job satisfaction and servant leadership. The findings support prior findings and indicate that servant leadership among hospital managers is important for staff satisfaction. Organizational trust is foundational to servant leadership, an important element of Nordic organizational structure and among current challenges of sustainable Nordic health care services. There are reasons to continue to investigate the importance of this leadership style in Nordic health care settings and, in particular, to investigate potential links to performance and patient outcomes.