Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to determine the toxic leadership perceptions of health care workers and to reveal whether the evaluations of the workers about toxic leadership subdimension differ according to individual and demographic characteristics or not. Another purpose of the study is to evaluate whether a scale that measures toxic leadership, validity and reliability revealed in other sectors can be used in the health care sector or not. Design/methodology/approach: The population of the study covers doctors, nurses and other health care workers who work in a state hospital operating in the province of Ankara, Turkey. The study was performed by convenience sampling. The data collection period covers between January-March 2016 and 292 usable surveys are attained. In order to reveal whether the evaluations of health care workers about toxic leadership and sub-dimensions differentiate or not in terms of individual and demographic characteristics, significance test of the difference between two means and one way analysis of variance were used. Findings: As a result of the conducted analyses, it was found that the scale used in the study was valid and reliable for health care sector as well. Additionally, it was revealed that toxic leadership perceptions of the participants had statistically significant differences in each of four dimensions in line with the age and total working experience, selfishness and negative state dimensions according to their profession.

Originality/value: The lack studies examining the toxic leadership in the health sector in Turkey is the most important value of this study.