Abstract
Background: Nurse managers are leaders in mining primary healthcare. Their leadership roles include inspiring and empowering operational managers and nursing personnel, by leading with competence developing them to become followers with insight and direction. However, these leadership roles are not well defined, and are negatively influenced by the traditional mining leadership style. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore and describe the nurse managers experiences of their leadership roles in a specific mining primary healthcare service in the West Rand, in order to develop recommendations to enhance them. Method: A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was used in this study, following a phenomenological approach as a research method. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used. Nurse managers from a specific mining primary healthcare service described their experiences of leadership roles during individual phenomenological interviews. Data saturation was reached on participant 7 out of 10 participants who provided a consent. To analyse data, four stages of Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological data analysis was used. An independent coder coded the data and a consensus meeting was held. The study was guided by the theoretical framework of Winkler’s role theory. Results: the following themes emanated from data analysis: 1) nurse managers lacked clarity about their leadership roles. 2) leadership role ambiguity, 3) leadership roles experienced and d) experienced challenges on leadership roles. Conclusion: This study revealed that the specifications and definition of leadership roles for nurse managers are not clear. Hence enhancements and expansions of these leadership roles remained stagnant.