The Importance of Leadership in the Healthcare Industry

This article discusses the significance of leadership in the healthcare industry. It highlights how effective leadership improves the quality of individual and team performance, and how clinically qualified leaders provide high standards of care for patients. The article also emphasizes the need for clinicians with leadership qualities and the importance of involving clinicians in decision-making and innovation.

The term healthcare comprises all avenues of healthcare including management,
governance, and clinical care. In the healthcare industry, leadership prevails in all
the levels of hierarchy. According to a research report, effective leadership improves
the quality of the individual as well as team performance. The research report
explains that effective leadership directly affects the people, their belief, work culture,
and performance. Leadership guides the organization and the employees toward a
common goal, even though there can be differences in individual opinion in a diverse
scenario. Economic stability, history of the organization as well as the concerned
industry, and political changes can influence the performance of an organization, but
it is the leadership that guides them towards the organizational goal (Australia,
2012).
According to a study based on 1300 hospitals across the USA and Europe, has
revealed that leadership is a critical part of the healthcare industry. Clinically
qualified leaders prove to be better equipped for providing high standards of care for
patients. The health workforce surveys in the United Kingdom has shown the
inversely proportional relationship between the quality of leadership and the rates of
consumer complaints. The number of complaints by patients is seen to be lower in
organizations with good leadership qualities (Daly, Jackson, Mannix, Davidson, &
Hutchinson, 2014).
The need of the hour is to have more clinicians with leadership qualities rather than
simply posting the clinicians in a formal management position. A major concern for
the system is the lack of engagement of the clinicians in leadership decisions or
governance. Clinical leadership is not defined by placing a clinical person in a
management position. It ideally means to involve the clinicians in the day to day
decision making and motivate them to come up with innovative ideas and skills

which shall help in the positive clinical outcome. Clinical leadership should include
training in quality control, lean and safety training in healthcare. These approaches
shall help in the development of leadership as a continuous process of improvement
in the delivery of service in the healthcare industry (Hargett, et al., 2017).
The necessity for having clinicians in management positions are:
 Approx 80% of the cost-saving decisions are taken by the clinical decision
 Generally, issues arise due to a lack of proper governance rather than clinical
expertise
 Budgets and scarce resources are handled by the senior people in the clinical
system
 Senior clinical leaders lack training in management and leadership
Another major issue faced by the system is the selection of inexperienced clinicians
and training them for formal management positions.
The problem of high attrition in the nursing staff can also be rectified by effective
leadership and management at the clinical level. Nurse managers have an important
role to play in the reduction of absenteeism of nurses and excessive burnout of the
existing staff members. By proper staff and workload allocation management, higher
levels of job satisfaction are derived along with the increase in the rate of retention of
nurses. The nurse manager needs to create an atmosphere of mutual respect, a
common goal for the organization, motivated approach at all the levels and ultimately
efficient conflict resolution (Nelsey & Brownie, 2012).

Bibliography
Australia, H. W. (2012). Leadership for the Sustainability of the Health System: Part
1-A, Literature Review. Adelaide: Siggins Miller Pty. Ltd.
Daly, J., Jackson, D., Mannix, J., Davidson, P., & Hutchinson, M. (2014, November
21). The importance of clinical leadership in the hospital setting. Journal of
Healthcare Leadership , 75-83.
Hargett, C., Doty, J., Hauck, J., Webb, A., Cook, S., Tsipis, N., et al. (2017).
Developing a model for effective leadership in healthcare: a concept mapping
approach. Journal on Healthcare Leadership , 69-78.
Nelsey, L., & Brownie, S. (2012). Effective leadership, teamwork and mentoring -
Essential elements in promoting generational cohesion in the nursing workforce
and retaining nurses . Collegian , 197-202.