Leadership Management and Teamwork in Healthcare

Running head: LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND TEAMWORK IN HEALTHCARE
REFLECTIVE WRITING ON LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND TEAMWORK
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND TEAMWORK IN HEALTHCARE
Introduction
The purpose of the paper is to explore and reflect upon the leadership,
management and teamwork in healthcare professional practices. Leadership in
healthcare can be defined as the behaviour of individual medical personnel while
instructing or directing the tasks to a group of people for a shared goal (Babatunde
and El-Gohary 2018). The main characteristic of a leader is to influence the activities
within a group and ensure effective coping strategies to manage changes (Delmatoff
and Lazarus 2014). Effective leadership is essential for every organisation including
the healthcare institutes and the hospitals (Fitzgerald et al. 2013). Effective
leadership helps to resolve management challenges, staff conflicts and ensures that
the patients get adequate treatment and services in the organisation (Al-Sawai
2013). Effective leadership results in collective teamwork within an organisation,
when information is communicated to the co-workers and other systems associated
with the service (Delmatoff and Lazarus 2014). Based on a significant experience on
medical practice from a prestigious hospital a reflection has been presented. The
Driscoll Model of reflection has been applied to conduct a self-evaluation and event
analysis with precision. Moreover, the framework has also been used to design a
Personal Development Plan (Action plan) to change the course of actions in future
when similar challenges are witnessed.

2LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND TEAMWORK IN HEALTHCARE
Driscoll's Model of Reflection on Leadership in Healthcare
(Source: Babatunde, and El-Gohary 2018)
Driscoll's model of reflection is based on three questions “What”, “So what” and
“Now What” which guides in the process of reflection (Babatunde and El-Gohary
2018).
An efficient leader must be intimidating but at the same time must possess a
set of effective leadership skills. According to Kumar (2013), a leader must have
good communication skills and the habit of listening to his or her team members.

3LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND TEAMWORK IN HEALTHCARE
This improves the team productivity. In addition to this, it is crucial for a leader to be
sagacious, especially within the healthcare industry (Swanwick and McKimm 2017).
The leader must be able to face the present challenges and focus on the bigger
goals of the organisation (Kumar 2013). Also, the leader must be optimistic so as to
lead the team during a phase of crisis (Fitzgerald et al. 2013). It is the responsibility
of the leader to positively influence the staff members who are going through their
worst days (Delmatoff and Lazarus 2014). Also, a leader must be empathic to the co-
workers, which often lacks within a workplace (Giltinane 2013). Lastly, a leader must
have the quality of integrity that is they should remember and tightly adhere to the
ethical code of conduct for the professional practice (Al-Sawai 2013).
In a healthcare institution conflicts can take place between a nurse and a
doctor, staff members and ward managers, doctors or nursing professionals and
instrument technician, patients and their family and other staff members. Effective
leadership and communication can resolve these conflicts (Giltinane 2013). A similar
situation was witnessed in the hospital, where a conflict had occurred related to the
staff room transformation. The staff members wanted to purchase commodities such
as a refrigerator, microwave, radio, and chairs for the staff room. However, the ward
manager wished to invest the money in other things the reason being the money was
obtained from Christmas raffle. In this case, it can be said that the ward manager
was autocratic and imposed his decision on the nurses and doctors. As per Kumar
(2013), autocratic leadership can be defined as the leadership style where the leader
is extremely controlling and does not involve the team members in the decision
making process. The care professionals being subordinates were forced to succumb
to the ward manager’s decision. The ward manger did not exhibit the qualities of a
good leader as he failed to include the team of care professionals in the decision