Background: Ethical leadership has special value and become the most important in handling
the staff nurses ‘job stress. Aim of the study: To assess head nurses' ethical leadership and its
relation to staff nurses' job stress. Subjects and Method: A descriptive-correlational design
was used in this study. The study was conducted at Tanta University Main Hospital. The
study subject: including all (27) head nurses and 241 staff nurses selected randomly from
total (640). Two tools were used; Ethical Leadership structured questionnaire and job stress
scale. Results: nearly half (48.1%) of the head nurses had high perception level of overall
ethical leadership while, about one third (35.8%) of staff nurses had high of overall head
nurses' ethical leadership, and more than half (55.2%) of them had low level of the overall job
stress. Conclusion: There was a significant negative correlation between staff nurses' total
perception of head nurses' ethical leadership and their total job stress. Recommendations:
Provide training programs for all nursing staff levels about ethical leadership and improve
their perception about ethical leadership as the strategy to reduce staff nurses' job stress. Prim
importance attending in-service education programs on ethical leadership as the request for
pre promotion for nursing management position