Leading with care: Unveiling how servant leadership boosts patient safety through employee well-being and knowledge sharing

Abstract

This study examines the association between servant leadership patient safety and evaluates the mediating roles of employee well-being and knowledge sharing in Ghanaian hospitals. Using employees’ self-reported data from 691 healthcare professionals (an 81.3 % response rate), selected through a convenience sampling technique, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to test our research model. Our findings show that servant leadership is positively associated with patient safety, employee well-being and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, both employee well-being and knowledge sharing partially mediate the relationship between servant leadership and patient safety, and the indirect effect via knowledge sharing was larger than that via employee well-being. A statistically significant but small sequential mediation effect is observed through successive improvements in these mediators. Our study offers valuable theoretical and practical implications. Thus, we advocate for the integration of servant leadership practices, comprehensive well-being programmes, and robust knowledge-sharing mechanisms to enhance patient safety outcomes. By integrating the job demands–resources model and social exchange theory, this study broadens theoretical understanding of healthcare leadership and offers practical guidance for leadership development programmes in low and middle income settings. Given the cross sectional, convenience sample design, the findings should be interpreted as associative rather than causal, and generalisability is limited.