Role of Management and Leadership in Healthcare

Question:

The purpose and function of management and leadership in the healthcare organisation is to help create and maintain integration, bring employees from all levels of the organisation closer together, and to enhance performance and productivity. 

Basically, healthcare management and leadership is the personality, attitude and behaviour of the organization. Management and leadership style is made up of the assumptions, values, and norms of organisation members, and their behaviours. 

Demonstrate an understanding of organisational management and leadership styles as to relate to healthcare system. 
 

This essay aims to provide an understanding of organisational management and leadership styles in relation to a healthcare system. The purpose and function of management and leadership in the healthcare organisation is to provide assistance for creating and maintaining integration, bringing employees from all levels of the organisation in close association, and enhancing the overall performance and productivity. Healthcare management and leadership concern the attitude, personality and behavior of a healthcare organization. Management and leadership style is made up of the values, norms, and assumptions of the members of organization and their behaviors (Gopee & Galloway, 2013). In this essay, the chosen style of management is democratic style of management and chosen leadership style is Transformational style of leadership. This essay will discuss the roles of a manager and a leader and will describe the principles that are adopted by a leader to ensure the effective working environment in a healthcare organization. It will also discuss the role played by the healthcare organisation in the development of effective managers and leaders.

In a healthcare organization, leadership is one of the most important criteria of the healthcare professionals. It involves the interactions between a lead and the other staff and influences them to achieve the goals of the workplace. The best style of leadership with respect to a healthcare organization is Transformational leadership (Rigolosi, 2012).  The leaders who possess this type of leadership have the capability of changing their workforce from self-serving persons in the organization. These leaders possess a clear vision and have the ability to communicate effectively with all the employees. They stimulate them to be more inventive and acts as role models. They are always ready to take risks and or us alternative methods to achieve the collective vision of the organization. Thus, they provide space for their employees as well as the organization all together to grow and prosper in an efficient manner (Shanks, 2016).  

The management style which is preferred the most in a healthcare organisation is Democratic management style which is also also known as participative management style. In this type of management, the manager consults the team prior to making decisions and maintains the overall control (Kelloway et al., 2012). The team leader decides who will perform the work, how a particular task will be addressed and never loses the view of the fact that the manager possess the ultimate accountability. There occurs a good consultation among the teams so that they can identify the problems early. The morale of the staff is benefitted by a good communication among the team members (Numerato et al., 2012).  This style of management offers a variety of advantages at all the levels of the organization. By forming a sense of control in organisation, democratic management inculcates a sense of pride and encourages the employees to enhance output in order to accomplish their goals. The employees who are given with the opportunity to participate in terms of making decisions of the organisation then they consider themselves as a part of the team striving to accomplish a common goal. Through this, they also discover their sense of worth and their ability of inventiveness is enhanced (Hutchinson & Jackson, 2013).

Importance of Transformational Leadership Style in Healthcare

In a healthcare organisation, the managers have a legal and ethical obligation to make sure that a high quality of care is offered to the individuals who seek help in order to recover from their illness or disease (Kelloway et al., 2012). These managers are in a leading position to mandate procedures systems, policies and organisational environments. Therefore, several scholars have argued that it is apparent that the managers of healthcare possess a significant and evident role in the safety of patient and quality of care and that it is one of the main priorities of the healthcare managers (Wang et al., 2012). The role of a leader having transformational leadership style in the healthcare setting encompasses encouraging teamwork among members of staff; motivate them for developing positive self-respect. They also empower them to become more involved for developing and implementing procedures and policies. The transformational leader depicts reliability and serves as a role model to others. The presence of a transformational leadership is essential, especially in the healthcare sector (Cummings & Worley, 2014).  The qualities of transformational leadership promote an environment, which is healthy for the staff and the employees, which will lead to the improved satisfaction if patients, satisfaction of staff and retention. This type of leadership encompasses inspiration, charisma, and intellectual stimulation together with individual thoughtfulness. The leaders having this style of leadership possess self-direction and self-confidence (Kumar, 2013). In the healthcare setting, transformational leaders stimulate the other staff members by encouraging the utilization of evidence-based practices and addressing the “how” and “why” of precise clinical actions.  An exceptionally prominent characteristic of a leader having transformational leadership style in a healthcare organization includes the act of of engaging the the stakeholders in the process of leadership. In healthcare sector, stakeholders include institutions, organisations and healthcare providers, healthcare industries, representatives of the state government, patients and healthcare academia (Erskine et al., 2013).

Influencing and motivating others are the essential elements of transformational leadership. Both of these, not only allow the leaders to enhance the skills of leadership and capabilities, but also assist them to navigate the undeviating healthcare environment. Through the influence of this type of leadership, the leaders and their cohorts raise themselves to achieve new heights of development and success (Green et al., 2013). They are also capable of sustaining themselves in an enduring effort for defining and constructing meaning in their lives of work. This type of leadership approach not only enhances the performance and efficiency, but also leads to an optimistic variation in the lives of the members of organisation. The leaders having transformational leadership style achieve results of a superior quality because of their capability to encourage and transform the individuals from obedient followers into independent leaders who can prove themselves more than the expectations of the organisations. According to Huber (2013), the individuals who are in support of the principles of this type of leadership possess workforce having higher levels of encouragement, performance and satisfaction, as well as lesser levels of anxiety and burnout. These type of leaders also ensure that their teams are more collaborative, efficient and inventive, which can lead their organisations to respond rapidly and effectively to change. Additionally, these type of organisations posses effectual, improved and more caring cultures (Top et al., 2013). 

Advantages of Democratic Management Style in Healthcare

Several scholars have revealed similar outcomes in their inclusive research to explore the impact of ‘engaging’ or transformational leadership style on the performance of the organizations. They discovered that culture of ‘engaging’ or transformational leadership style extensively predicts augmented levels of satisfaction, motivation and commitment in staff members (Rigolosi, 2012).   This coalesces with decreased anxiety and emotional exhaustion and enhanced productivity and effectiveness of the team. There exist a number of frameworks or models of transformational leadership that may prove beneficial to the healthcare professionals who are working in the healthcare sector. Among all of them, the one which is quickly gaining appreciation within the National Health Sector as well as other sectors is ‘engaging leadership’. The structure of this particular model is characterized by four clusters of dimensions: ‘engaging the organisation, ‘engaging the individuals’, ‘core values and personal qualities’ and ‘moving forward together’ (Green et al., 2013).

The importance of engaging leadership relies on enabling and serving others to display the style of leadership by their own. It is not about being an exceptional individual, but rather a fairly vulnerable, ordinary and humble- or at least exceedingly accessible, open and transparent individual. This approach towards leadership harmonizes the viewpoints of other scholars. The leaders having this leadership style possess a remarkable determination to get things completed; however possess a level of humbleness that differentiates them from the other leaders. They hardly ever converse regarding themselves and are more enthusiastic to talk regarding the organisation and the involvement and input of others (Numerato et al., 2012).  This leadership style focuses on the significance of working in a team and underlines the advantages of collaboration that construct a culture in which conversation is open and encouragement of doing new things and developing new ways are listened, encouraged and really appreciated. It focuses that leadership exists in all the organizational levels, particularly as individual share a thought that drives them towards accomplishing goals of offering quality and safe healthcare services (Kumar, 2013).

For the development of effective managers and leaders, healthcare organisations play a significant role. The healthcare organizations are dynamic and multifaceted. The environment of organisations needs that the managers and leaders provide leadership, coordination as well s supervision to the employees (Erskine et al., 2013). Organizations have been created for achieving the goals that are not easy for any single person. In the healthcare organisations, the extent and complexity of duties performed in the provision of services is so enormous that the individual employees working on their own could not complete the tasks assigned to them. Furthermore, the important tasks in generating services in the organisations of healthcare require the synchronization of several extremely specific disciplines that are supposed to work in association faultlessly (Top et al., 2013). The managers are required to ensure that the tasks of the organization are performed in the best possible ways in order to accomplish the goals of the organization and those suitable resources, counting financial as well as human resources, sufficient to provide support to the healthcare organization (Kelloway et al., 2012). 

Legal and Ethical Obligations of Managers in Healthcare

The managers of healthcare are selected to positions of control or authority in which they construct the organisation of healthcare by making significant decisions (Huber, 2013). For instance, getting hold of technology, hiring and development of employees or staff members, addition and reduction of services together with the distribution and spending of monetary resources.  The decisions that are made by the managers and leaders of healthcare not only lay stress to ensure that the patients receive the most apposite, well-timed and efficient services, but also concentrates on the attaining of targets of performance that are preferred by the managers and leaders. Eventually, the decisions made by the managers and leaders affect the overall performance of the healthcare organisation (Frankel & PGCMS, 2016).  The managers and leaders must keep in consideration the two domains as they make decisions and perform a variety of tasks. These domains are called as internal and external domains. The external domain involves the activities, resources and influences that have an existence outside the organizational boundary but it considerably have an effect on the organisation (Swayne et al., 2012).  These factors encompass the needs of the community, characteristics of the population, and compensations from the business insurers together with Medicaid and Medicare. The internal domain includes those focus areas which the managers and leaders need to tackle every day like ensuring the suitable number and types of members of staff, quality of care and financial performance (Grol et al., 2013). These areas reveal the organizational operations where the managers and leaders have the main control. Maintaining the dual viewpoint needs remarkable sense of balance on the major effort and part of the management in order to make high-quality decisions efficiently (Wang et al., 2012).

In the end, it can be concluded that transformational leadership style and democratic management style are crucial for the success of a healthcare organization, as the professionals of healthcare are responsible for providing quality care and services to the patients. The best style of leadership with respect to a healthcare organization is Transformational leadership. The leaders who possess this type of leadership have the capability of changing their workforce from self-serving persons in the organization. These leaders possess a clear vision and have the ability to communicate effectively with all the employees. The management style which is preferred the most in a healthcare organisation is Democratic management style. In this type of management, the manager consults the team prior to making decisions and maintains the overall control. Hence, every healthcare organization should follow these two aspects in order to develop and prosper in an efficient manner.  

References

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Erskine, J., Hunter, D. J., Small, A., Hicks, C., McGovern, T., Lugsden, E., … & Eccles, M. P. (2013). Leadership and transformational change in healthcare organisations: A qualitative analysis of the North East Transformation System. Health Services Management Research, 26(1), 29-37.

Frankel, A., & PGCMS, R. (2016). What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. nursing, 10, 32.

Gopee, N., & Galloway, J. (2013). Leadership and management in healthcare. Sage.

Green, A. E., Miller, E. A., & Aarons, G. A. (2013). Transformational leadership moderates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention among community mental health providers. Community mental health journal, 49(4), 373-379.

Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., & Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013). Improving patient care: the implementation of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.

Huber, D. (2013). Leadership and nursing care management. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Hutchinson, M., & Jackson, D. (2013). Transformational leadership in nursing: towards a more critical interpretation. Nursing Inquiry, 20(1), 11-22.

Kelloway, E. K., Turner, N., Barling, J., & Loughlin, C. (2012). Transformational leadership and employee psychological well-being: The mediating role of employee trust in leadership. Work & Stress, 26(1), 39-55.

Kumar, R. D. (2013). Leadership in healthcare. Anaesthesia & Intensive Care Medicine, 14(1), 39-41.

Numerato, D., Salvatore, D., & Fattore, G. (2012). The impact of management on medical professionalism: a review. Sociology of health & illness, 34(4), 626-644.

Rigolosi, E. L. M. (2012). Management and leadership in nursing and health care: An experiential approach. Springer Publishing Company.

Shanks, N. H. (2016). Introduction to health care management. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2012). Strategic management of health care organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Top, M., Tarcan, M., Tekingündüz, S., & Hikmet, N. (2013). An analysis of relationships among transformational leadership, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational trust in two Turkish hospitals.The International journal of health planning and management, 28(3), e217-e241.

Wang, X., Chontawan, R., & Nantsupawat, R. (2012). Transformational leadership: effect on the job satisfaction of Registered Nurses in a hospital in China. Journal of advanced nursing, 68(2), 444-451.