مجلة الجودة الصحية Leadership in Health Sector

Introduction

Leadership involves more than being the head of a team, and it is very important that an
individual must know and understand their roles in their leadership position regardless of the
organization or the type of work they do. Any setup in which there are more than two people
operating as a team has a leader and the roles of these leaders may not be so clear cut as they are
mandated with making tough decisions which affect the performance of the entire team. In the
healthcare sector, there are those nurses and doctors who will be in leadership positions and they
are mandated in making decisions which have benefits to the entire hospital setup and the
healthcare as a whole ( Al-Sawai, 2013). They determine how different activities will be handled
within the healthcare sector and they make decisions on the way forward in terms of
management of diseases and patients. Ethical dilemmas are also very important part of the
leadership in healthcare since they determine how different ethical issues are dealt with and the
protocol of orders in the way different issues affecting this sector are handled.

Leadership in Healthcare

There are many challenges in the leadership styles in the healthcare industry because
most of the management and leadership styles were not tailor made for the healthcare sector but
for the business and corporate world and they were then introduced in the healthcare industry.
This means that the leadership theories in use today are not really meant for the healthcare
industry and it becomes difficult to manage issues using the corporate leadership theories that are
there today because healthcare is comprised of different departments and arms which require to
be well managed in order to remove the complications existing in the departmental ranks. It is
important to note that leadership styles which are there in the business world may not be so
effective in the management or leadership of the healthcare industry because they sometimes
involve a lot of red tape while this may not be possible where some decisions on complicated
issues in the organization may require immediate decisions. Recently, many scholars have
focused on the issue of leadership in the health sector and several models have been designed
which favor certain circumstances in the industry (Mann, 2011).
This essay, besides discussing different leadership theories in the healthcare industry,
discusses the most appropriate leadership theories for old people in hospices. Some of the basic
leadership qualities that an individual in the leadership of a healthcare system should have
include compassionate care for the benefit of patients, high quality service care to the patients
and the need for employees to be united in the bid to give satisfaction to patient (Van, 2010).
This is the general overview of the best qualities for a leader in the healthcare industry who takes
the motive of their job seriously.

Heroic Leadership

Heroic leadership has been confused with transactional leadership for a long time since
its inception by Burns in 1978. However, According to Cohen, heroic leadership involves a
leader ensuring that things are done according to the mission and intended purpose of an
objective but still the leader inspires his workers or those individuals below him and all followers
of the leader in a personal or individual capacity so that all individuals are focused towards the
attainment of the exact mission without having to be supervised or superintended over by the
leadership of the organization ( Al-Sawai, 2013). The military is given as the best example of
heroic leadership in which the senior leaders in the military instill in the military men a sense of
completion of the mission and all follow with the focus on the mission. There are several laws
that govern heroic leadership beginning with the need for integrity and honesty.
The question of the personal characteristics of an individual in leadership positions is
very important. A leader is someone who is able to manage his own undertakings effectively and
who is able to deal with his or her internal conflicts to the point that other people can follow and
emulate the actions of that individual (Bolman et al, 2003).

Theories of Leadership

The most common theories include transformation and transactional theories which have
been mentioned earlier in this essay. Transactional theory of leadership is more authoritarian and
bureaucratic. It gives the leader absolute power over the followers so that the leader makes
decisions and enforces those decisions without the followers having a chance to question the
activities they are required to do (Harrison, 1999). The leader has qualities which thus separate him or she from the followers and minimal interaction between the leader and the followers is experienced.

The theory gives leaders the power to make orders and assign duties to the followers,
who in this case are employees, and they are expected to work under supervision and according
to a certain code of conduct which they cannot go against even though the procedure may be
biased(Manion, 2005). This cannot work well in a hospital setting or for matters of healthcare
because issues that arise in healthcare are dynamic and decisions are required to be dynamic and
authoritarianism would not be for any benefits (Garman et al, 2010). For instance, even though a
patient may be scheduled for a certain therapeutic procedure at a certain time, it would not be
possible to wait until the time assigned comes if the patient developed complications regardless
of the rules set in that unit(Lavis, 2005)

Transformational theory

Transformational theory, on the other hand, is more liberal and does not stick to rules and
regulation so much and allow the dynamism that is expected in the hospital setting. It is
necessary to understand that although the transformation theory is an extension of the heroic
leadership styles, it does not require that individuals are constantly supervised in order for them
to complete their duties according to the expectations rather that leaders expect that individuals
in a department are knowledgeable on their roles in the workplace and hence allow them to work
towards the mission as long as they understand the mission (Atchison, 2001). An example in the
renal unit is that a dialysis scheduled for the next day can be shifted so that the patient received
immediate attention while another patient whose condition may not be critical is moved to the
second day because some circumstances in the health of the individual may not allow the patient
to wait.

Conclusion

There are several ways by which most of the existing business leadership skills can be
used in the management of a healthcare department, but the most important issue to understand
when it comes to leadership in the healthcare sector is the need for leaders to understand the
mission of the system and to ensure that leadership strategies employed so not have the slightest
potential to affect how the achievement of that mission is handled. Transformational leadership
theory is more beneficial in the creation of a perfect health leadership model because it is more
liberal and flexible and allows leaders to make decisions which are dynamic and accommodate
any circumstantial occurrences which could affet how a mission is attained.

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