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. 2018 Sep 27;13(1):127.
doi: 10.1186/s13012-018-0817-7.

Managerial leadership for research use in nursing and allied health care professions: a systematic review

Wendy A Gifford  1 , Janet E Squires  2   3 , Douglas E Angus  4 , Lisa A Ashley  5 , Lucie Brosseau  6 , Janet M Craik  7 , Marie-Cécile Domecq  8 , Mary Egan  6   9 , Paul Holyoke  10 , Linda Juergensen  2   11 , Lars Wallin  12   13   14 , Liquaa Wazni  2 , Ian D Graham  13   15
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Managerial leadership for research use in nursing and allied health care professions: a systematic review

Wendy A Gifford et al. Implement Sci. .

Abstract

Background: Leadership by point-of-care and senior managers is increasingly recognized as critical to the acceptance and use of research evidence in practice. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify the leadership behaviours of managers that are associated with research use by clinical staff in nursing and allied health professionals.

Methods: A mixed methods systematic review was performed. Eight electronic bibliographic databases were searched. Studies examining the association between leadership behaviours and nurses and allied health professionals' use of research were eligible for inclusion. Studies were excluded if leadership could not be clearly attributed to someone in a management position. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts, reviewed full-text articles, extracted data and performed quality assessments. Narrative synthesis was conducted.

Results: The search yielded 7019 unique titles and abstracts after duplicates were removed. Three hundred five full-text articles were reviewed, and 31 studies reported in 34 articles were included. Methods used were qualitative (n = 19), cross-sectional survey (n = 9), and mixed methods (n = 3). All studies included nurses, and six also included allied health professionals. Twelve leadership behaviours were extracted from the data for point-of-care managers and ten for senior managers. Findings indicated that managers performed a diverse range of leadership behaviours that encompassed change-oriented, relation-oriented and task-oriented behaviours. The most commonly described behavior was support for the change, which involved demonstrating conceptual and operational commitment to research-based practices.

Conclusions: This systematic review adds to the growing body of evidence that indicates that manager-staff dyads are influential in translating research evidence into action. Findings also reveal that leadership for research use involves change and task-oriented behaviours that influence the environmental milieu and the organisational infrastructure that supports clinical care. While findings explain how managers enact leadership for research use, we now require robust methodological studies to determine which behaviours are effective in enabling research use with nurses and allied health professionals for high-quality evidence-based care.

Trial registration: PROSPERO CRD42014007660.

Keywords: Administrators; Allied health; Evidence-based practice; Leadership; Managers; Nursing; Research use.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

As this paper is a synthesis of published literature, ethics approval was not required.

Consent for publication

Not applicable

Competing interests

Gifford, Graham, Squires and Wallin were the authors on studies included in this review. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA diagram of study selection
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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