The Importance of Leadership in the Healthcare Industry

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