A literature review of research on leadership of Korean hospital nurse

Purpose: This study was done to identify trends in leadership-related research by reviewing studies on hospital nurses in South Korea. Methods: The research was conducted from April 2 to 14, 2018 and search databases were RISS, KISS, DBpia, KM base, NAL, and NDSL. Search terms were 'leadership’ and 'nursing' in the Korean language, and total 141 papers were selected. Results: Analysis of the research on leadership showed that 96.4% of research methods were quantitative research, and 60.3% were predictive researches. For study settings, 46.2% were general hospitals, 96.5% were staff nurses. In the study of leadership variables, 60.3% were independent variables and recent leadership was used as a mediating variable (4.3%) and a moderating variable (2.8%). Among the leadership types, self-leadership (31.2%) was the most common, and the main variable related to leadership was job satisfaction (25.8%). Conclusion: These results provide useful data for deriving new research ideas about nursing leadership. Furthermore, this study has significance for providing the evidence for developing new leadership programs and policies in nursing organizations.