Mediating Effect of Felt Obligation Between Inclusive Leadership and Caring Behavior of Chinese Nurses.

Purpose: It aims to validate the mediating role of felt obligation between inclusive leadership and the caring behavior of clinical nurses using a structural equation model.

Methods: All of the nurses were assessed with the general information questionnaire, caring behavior scale, felt obligation scale and inclusive leadership questionnaire. AMOS 21.0 was used to construct the structural equation model and analyze the mediating effect of felt obligation, and Bootstrap method was used to test the mediating effect model.

Results: The total scores of caring behavior, felt obligation and inclusive leadership were 125.25 ± 18.31, 21.38 ± 3.36 and 62.95 ± 11.95 respectively. Felt obligation played a partial mediating role in the relationship between inclusive leadership and caring behavior of nurses, and the mediating effect accounted for 43.5%.

Conclusions: Felt obligation plays a partial mediating effect between inclusive leadership and caring behavior of nurses. Nursing managers can adopt the leadership concept of inclusive leadership to enhance the level of felt obligation of nurses, so as to better improve the caring behavior of nurses.