Operational Management Skills for Healthcare Practice Assignment

This report delves into the critical aspects of operational management within healthcare settings. It begins by outlining the roles and responsibilities of operational managers, emphasizing their impact on service delivery, financial management, and staff leadership. The report then explores the significance of personal leadership skills such as communication, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence in driving operational efficiency and patient care quality. Various leadership theories, including transformational, shared, and collaborative leadership, are examined in relation to their practical application within healthcare. The report further discusses how these theories can support the alignment of management styles to different contexts, offering insights into how leaders can adapt their approaches to optimize performance. Additionally, the report addresses the development and management of teams, strategies for resolving workplace conflicts, and the planning and implementation of change initiatives within healthcare organizations. Finally, the report concludes by assessing the potential impact of these changes on service provision and patient outcomes, providing a holistic view of operational management's role in the healthcare sector.

Developing Operational
Management Skills for
Healthcare Practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO1..................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Roles and Responsibilities’ of an operational manager in healthcare practice......................3
P2 Significance of different personal skills are prioritised in leadership through different
operational tasks in healthcare practice.......................................................................................4
LO2..................................................................................................................................................6
P3 Describe different theories of leadership in term of their application to work roles in
healthcare practice.......................................................................................................................6
P4 Explain theories can support aligning style of management to different contexts in
healthcare practice.......................................................................................................................7
LO3..................................................................................................................................................8
P5 Use theoretical models of leadership to contribute towards the development and
management of a team in healthcare practice..............................................................................8
P6 Outline different strategies that use to resolve conflict arising between individuals in
different contexts in healthcare practices....................................................................................9
LO4................................................................................................................................................11
P7 Plan for implementing change in an area of provision.........................................................11
P8 Describe the potential impact of the plan on service provision and outcomes for individuals
in healthcare practice.................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Operational management is an area of manager who develops the highest level of
efficiency possible within company. It always concerns about transforming material and labour
into goods and services in term of efficiency always try to enhance the profit of company.
However, they plays significant role in healthcare companies such they manages overall costs of
the company while offering quality services that is one of the major component of healthcare
operation management. The main objective of the operation managers in the healthcare company
is to streamline cost and to acquire funding to maintain satisfactory levels and quality of services
which are offered. In this report will discuss about roles and responsibilities of an operational
manager in the healthcare practice. Furthermore it will describe about different personal skills
that are prioritized in leadership through different operational tasks in the healthcare practice.
LO1
P1 Roles and Responsibilities’ of an operational manager in healthcare practice
Operational management in the healthcare sector perform various roles and
responsibilities such as oversees all practices establish to supervise and manage the different
processes which arises to drive the service developed, spanning financing, policy, staffing and
facility. Overall operation management supervises day to day practice in healthcare company
which influences level of patient’s experience and also taking high level strategic operations
(Ali, Wang and Johnson, 2020). A healthcare manager acts as a mediator between clinical staff
and the recipient of healthcare services. Generally, operation manager oversees general
functioning of healthcare facility. They also support company to manage it’s financial wellbeing
of implements policy, healthcare facility and manages non-medical and medical staff. In
addition, they perform various roles in the healthcare practice which are mentioned below as
follows:
 Manage Health Service: A healthcare operation managers monitors overall functioning of
a healthcare centres on daily basis. That is one of the prime roles of operational managers
which they perform effectively.

 Strategic Planning: Operation managers also have ability to predict future logistic needs
then they can maintain the stability of a healthcare centres.
 Technology Proficiency: It is another responsibility of operation manager that they must
have proficiency in information technology.
 Implementing Policy: It is one of the most crucial role of operation manager in the
healthcare centre such as they monitor that all employees are performing their under the
defined rules and regulation or not. it is a way of ensuring patient for the safety.
 Data Analysis: It is another role of operation manager who determine trends in data to
plan future project and oversees the daily operations of a healthcare facility.
There are some responsibilities of operation managers that are mentioned in following points:
 It is a prime responsibility of healthcare operational manager to monitor and evaluate
different facility of staff in effective manner.
 It is another responsibility of managers to keep confidentiality and integrity of healthcare
facility to ensure patient that no information will be disclosed to other.
 Operational managers are responsible for the day to day operations of the facility so, it is
responsibility of the manager to secure the financial stability of the establishment.
 They cultivate an efficient and safe environment to bring level of customer’s satisfaction
that is one of the major responsibilities of operation manager which they perform in the
healthcare practice.
 They replace failing with outdated equipment as well as maintain adequate amounts of
healthcare supplies which assists health providers to offer best care services within
timeframe (Campbell and et.al., 2020).
 They apply policies and monitors the employee’s compliance towards policies so that
conflicts do not take place in between management and healthcare providers.
Thus, different roles and responsibilities are required in the Healthcare operational manager in
the company.

P2 Significance of different personal skills are prioritised in leadership through different
operational tasks in healthcare practice
Personal skills are determined as soft skills which are not easy to explain. These skills are also
known as interpersonal or people skills. Personal skills are dependability, quick adaptability,
analytical skills, motivation, problem-solving, emotional intelligence and others which enables a
person to become good leader. These skills are majorly prioritised in leadership because most of
the skills posses’ by leader. For example, a good leader should have good communication which
helps them to communicate with other staff and builds good relation with them. As same
operational managers require to have good personal skill because these helps them to become
good leader for employees (Coetzer, Bussin and Geldenhuys, 2017). They perform various
operational tasks in the healthcare company like controlling costs and enhancing quality of
services which delivers to patient through staff. problem-solving is also included in the personal
skills which is highly prioritised in a leader because they often deal with different situations
while performing different operation tasks. In Baverley Care Home, Mr Robertson was the unit
manager who oversees day to day patient care, monitoring, directing and develops nursing staff
and reports to upper management of healthcare practice to ensure that quality of patient care in
long-term care centre. But when Mr Robertson, Miss Brown, Mr Bakataria were replaced from
their position then three staff have been recruited (Counte and et.al., 2019). These staff unable to
pay high attention over the operational tasks. It denotes that Mr Robertson has good personal
skills which makes him a good leader due to this they enable to perform different operational
tasks like effective staff management program, high level of client’s participation in care
delivery etc. in the workplace in effective manner. While new operation managers i.e. Miss
Jones, Mr Baktu and Miss Brown unable to perform operational tasks in effective manner which
leads negative impact on healthcare image.
Mr Baktu is good operational manager as compared other two deputy manager because
he always like to try and test new ideas. He likes to spend maximum time to empower his staff
and inspires them to give best performance in the workplace. He also a good critical thinker
which is required to have in a operational manager but during frustration he often criticizes other
two deputy managers that is one of the major limitation of him. This deputy managers posses’
good personal skills but not up to that scale so he needs to develop some competencies in his
own role as a leader and operational in the healthcare company.

LO2
P3 Describe different theories of leadership in term of their application to work roles in
healthcare practice
Leadership is the process of guiding group of people and individuals towards achieving
common goal. The major key aspect of the leadership role is to involve in influencing group
activities and cope up with changes. it is associated with improvement in company’s outcomes
when apply in healthcare setting. Healthcare system is composition of various professional
groups, specialities with intricate, departments etc. So, leadership is important to capitalize
diversity in the company and efficiently utilize resources whenever frame management
processes, while influencing persons to work towards common goals. There is various leadership
approaches which are adopted in healthcare setting to improve management in the more complex
environment. Leadership styles are mentioned below in following manner:
 Transformational leadership: This leadership theory is quite different from traditional
style of transactional leadership and emphasizes over the people who work more
effectively in the workplace. This leadership theory needs leaders to share vision in such
a way that is exciting, meaningful and collective purpose. The effective transformational
leaders are those managers who is committed, has vision to increase performance of
healthcare setting in it’s sector so they able to empower others as well. This leadership is
highly required for the nursing practice because it helps leaders to make nursing staff
dedicated for the job. For example, in Beverley Care Home Miss Jones is an operation
manager who is expert in nursing practice. So, this leadership style must require to have
in her to being good operational manager and leader as well.
 Shared leadership: It is a system of team-level leadership that empowers employees in the
decision-making process. leaders offer opportunity to the employee to manage and create
within a team and be effective at the workplace while dealing with different tasks.
Effective teamwork is considered key approach of shared leadership. This leadership
focuses on development of a productive collaborative relationship through task
delegation and support. This leadership is suitable for the Mr Baktu ho always
enthusiasm to test new ideas. He actually follow shared leadership style in the work role

because he spends maximum time with the staff to make them empowering and guides
them towards common goal (Driskell, Salas and Driskell, 2018).
 Collaborative leadership: It is considered one of the most assertive and cooperative
procedure that takes place when individuals work together in order to gain mutual
benefits, in a form of organizational association. This leadership style involves in sharing
information with co-workers and permits them to make their own informed decisions.
Such collaborative communication tactics increases healthcare management by
improving commitment between multiple stakeholders, sharing knowledge and
experience as well as reducing level of complexity within healthcare company.
Collaborative leadership needs a synergic work environment in healthcare so that
multiple parties are influenced to work together towards the following effective practice
and process. This leadership is suited for the Miss Brown as operational manager because
she has to take change accordingly trend. In contrast, she is regarded autocratic manger
because Miss Brown doe not like change. She always tends to introduce news idea in
respect of improving service but always unwilling to take risk or try new initiatives.
P4 Explain theories can support aligning style of management to different contexts in healthcare
practice
Transformation, shared and collaborative leadership theories can support management in
aligning style of management in the different contexts of healthcare setting. For example,
transformational leadership style is a type of management theory so it can help Miss Jones to
become leader in her job role like operational manager. She has taken expertise in nursing
practice but she is unsured about managerial and leadership style. Due to this, she unable to
perform work effectively in the healthcare setting. With the support of transformational
leadership theory, Miss Jones can enable to influence nursing staff to put more efforts in the
workplace while delivering care services to the dementia patients which ultimately improves
patient outcomes, improves organizational outcomes and leads level of satisfaction in employees
for the job. These are major benefits of the transformation leadership (Hoch and Dulebohn,
2017). Thus, this leadership theory can support Miss Jones’s aligning style of management to
operational manager in the healthcare setting. While collaborative leadership theory is fit for the
Miss Brown because she is a operation manager in the healthcare setting and always dismiss new
idea for service improvement but always unwilling to take new risk. The reason behind of this

Miss Brown is unable to collaborate staff towards achievement of common mission because she
never focus on employee’s wellbeing and does not allows them to work in group so Miss Brown
is compared with autocratic leader in her job role.
Autocratic leader always focuses on company’s growth instead of employee’s wellbeing
due to this company’s enables to gain short goals instead of long-term one. So, it is essential for
the Miss Brown to follow collaborative leadership theory because it will help her to build good
relationship with staff through which it can influence her staff to be competent and ready to take
new change. There are some key benefits that achieves through the collaborative theory such as
it supports to build collaborative relationship which allows company to gain better outcomes by
obtaining skills, technology as well as other resources (Kantanen and et.al., 2017). It is essential
for the Miss Brown to take new change then she can encourage other staff to be ready for each
situation. Thus, this leadership can support Miss Brown to align management style as operational
manager in the healthcare setting. MR Baktu is a critical thinker and likes to spend maximum
time with the staff to guide and empower them in decision-making process. He like to dismiss
new ideas and already ready to take change. theses characteristics makes him a good leader at his
job role. Shared leadership is more beneficial for the Mr Baktu because he does not lead wide
changes in their regular practice. But demerit of Mr Baktu is that whenever he frustrates then he
criticizes management and leadership styles of both operational managers which gives negative
impact on his profile as operation manager. This leadership theory supports Mr Baktu to keep
positive attitude towards other operational mangers which reflects on his profile and make him
good leader in the healthcare setting. There are various benefits of shared leadership such as it
increases level of activity and achievement, focuses on outcomes improvement in team processes
as well as increases ability to sustain performance in the healthcare system. Thus, different
leadership theories can support to align management styles to different contexts in the healthcare
setting.

LO3
P5 Use theoretical models of leadership to contribute towards the development and management
of a team in healthcare practice
There are four leadership models i.e. transactional, DNP, transformational and servant
leadership which have ability to management and development of team in the healthcare
practice. Transactional leadership highlights the importance of organization, monitoring and
group performance. it supports to build good relationship between staff and healthcare
executives as transactional. Transaction leadership plays vital role in managing and developing
team in the healthcare practice such as transformer leaders motivates staff through a system of
punishment and rewards to achieve daily tasks. It is known as managerial leadership because it
focuses on getting particular tasks which are completed by managing each portion. On the other
hand, DNP leadership is another theoretical model wherein operation managers work with
different teams of nurses in order to make unity. Such collaboration is naturally considered more
motivating and dedicating to the work as compared employees who are in other unit. This
theoretical leadership model supports operational managers to influence their staff to put more
efforts into the work by offering promotions according to the performance (Liang and et.al.,
2018). This leadership leaders are allowed to implement different leadership styles like
transactional, democratic as per their comfortless in respect of developing and managing a team
in the healthcare setting. Laissez-faire leadership is also another effective model that can be
followed by operational managers to empower their staff to take fewer decision on their hand
without guidance. Transformational leadership is considered one of the best theoretical models in
the healthcare industry because it plays vital role in leading level of satisfaction in employees for
the job and influences them to work in a team. With this leadership style transformer leader can
develop healthy communication between staff and management which is most essential for the
healthcare setting because when company have healthy personal and professional working
environment that automatically influence staff to give high performance and works in a team so
that maximum profit can achieved by healthcare company in term of client satisfaction, brand
image etc. these are theoretical models of leadership to contribute towards the management and
development of a team in the healthcare practices (Reeves and et.al., 2017).

P6 Outline different strategies that use to resolve conflict arising between individuals in different
contexts in healthcare practices
Conflict management can be defined as the process of limiting the negative aspects of
conflicts while improving the positive aspects of conflicts. The main goal of the conflict
management is to increase learning and group outcomes by resolving all issues due to this
conflict crisis takes place. There are five strategies of conflict resolutions such as competing,
obliging, avoiding, compromising and collaborating. Competing is prime strategy of conflict
resolution that arises between individuals in different contexts in different healthcare setting.
Operation managers follows this strategy and tries to satisfy their own desires at the expense of
other parties involved. Another is collaborating strategy that also follows by operation managers
to find solution together which entirely satisfies the concerns of all involved individuals.
Compromising is the third strategy of Thomas Kilmann model. According to this strategy,
individuals involves in finding an acceptable solution but it is not entirely satisfying concerns of
all people who are involved. Accommodating strategy is used to resolve conflicts that is
essentially involved in taking steps to lead satisfaction in other people’s concerns or demands. It
is considered good conflict strategy to resolve conflicts among individuals (Lopes, 2019).
There are several managers of the healthcare company who often avoid conflicts to keep hope
that it will resolve itself. These are the strategies that are often used to resolve conflict arisen
between individuals but only few one gets satisfaction or shows acceptance with the solutions.
For example, compromising and collaborative strategy follows by operation managers like Mr
Baktu either he is not happy with other two operation manager’s leadership and managerial
styles but after that he compromises with them to resolve conflicts (Sallis and et.al., 2016).
While avoidance conflict strategy follows by Miss Brown at the healthcare practice to avoid risk
associated challenges because she knows that if she take some emerging changes in the company
in that state conflicts issues can arises among staff or she can face employee resistance in the
workplace. So, she follows avoiding conflict strategy. Miss Jones uses the competing and
accommodating strategy and competing strategy to resolve conflict in the work role so she
always try to give better performance among others. Thus, different operational managers
follows different conflict strategies to maintain good relation among each other in the healthcare
practice.

Analyse theories that informs how teams are developed and managed to promote positive
outcomes in different contexts
There are various leadership theories like transformation, DNP, transactional etc. plays
significant role in developing a effective team for example transaction leadership through,
operational managers enables to set up vision for the staff and explain reason behind of team
formation. While transformation leadership supports leaders or managers to delegate different
tasks to the staff as per their expertise in a team so that each can put their 100%. Transformer
leaders also uses conflict resolution strategies because during task distribution conflict issues
takes place. So, it is essential for the manager to resolve conflict crisis among team members and
influences them to support each other to gain common goal of the company in effective manner.
While DNP leadership style supports managers or leaders to make enable team to take few
decisions at personal level without asking for directions (Mertens and Recker, 2020). Thus,
leaders enable to manage their team productively that ultimately promotes positive outcomes in
the healthcare practice.
LO4
P7 Plan for implementing change in an area of provision
Different health care professionals have always required to make a specific as well as
productive plan for implementing change in an area of provision. Basically, an effective plan of
change enables to healthcare professionals for systematically implementing change in daily
operations (Alsunbuli, 2020). However, before making the plan of implementing change, there
are healthcare professionals have to understand different models of change. A change
management model generally enables to systematically implementing the change. Currently
McKinsey 7S model, Kotter’s model ad Lewin’s model of change are three major models of
change in market place. After understanding about models of change, there are healthcare
professionals have to take steps towards change management processes and plans. This is really
a very mandatory as well as necessary step to all professionals of healthcare of Beverley Care
Home. An effective plan has been included below for properly implementing change in an area
of provision in practice of healthcare.

Request for Change
First, there are health care professionals at Beverley Care Home need to request for the
change implement to upper management of this healthcare organisation. However, analysis of
change management need is also one of major tasks to professionals of healthcare, because
without knowing its actual needs, on one can properly implement its decided change.
Impact Analysis
Analysis of change implementation process on the daily operations of healthcare
organisation is another major step in the plan. After knowing the impact of change, there are
professionals can be ready for managing this impact in positive way.
Approve/Deny
After deciding for implementing change, there are upper management and other health
care professionals of Beverley Care Home need to ensure that they have enough and appropriate
resources to implement the change (Stevenson and et.al., 2018). After knowing own existing
capabilities, they should approve or deny the process of change management.
Implement change
This is the main step under the plan where upper management at Beverley Care Home
need to take steps towards adopting any favourable model of change for perfectly implementing
its decided change in its workplace.
Review/Reporting
Review and reporting is the final stage in this plan, in which there are healthcare
professions have to review and prepare a report about the recently implemented change for
analysing is positive impact on the Beverley Care Home (Freeburg, 2020).
P8 Describe the potential impact of the plan on service provision and outcomes for individuals in
healthcare practice
The implication of the plan impacts over provision and individual outcomes in different
ways. For example, patient and provision (company’s output and input) outcomes will increased.

It reduces costs as well because requirements of health service will decrease with the implication
of the plan (Savage, 2020). It also improves provision of health services like quality of care
services because requirements for the health service also decreased. There is another example to
under the above sated fact that if people who suffered from cardiac health service that will
remain healthy. It is a lifestyle disease so with the support of plan it can be reduced through
exercise and eating healthy meals that ultimately reduces needs for the hospitalization and leaves
enough room for those clients who have unavoidable disease or disorder like dementia. It is a
long-term mental disorder due to these patients become more harmful for themselves because in
the dementia stage suicidal thoughts are more prevalent so such patients cannot leave alone.
When enough number of rooms will be vacant then it raises positive outcomes of the patient
because they get quality services from the nursing staff as per their situation (Norström and et.al.,
2020).
This will yield to lower demand of the health services by lowering client requirement for
the hospitalization. In other word, this plan will support to resolve all the challenges of excess
demands for the healthcare practices. Thus, it will improve healthcare provision and patients’
outcomes as well. apart from this this plan will also help operational managers to deal with other
issues like lack of management effectiveness and leadership capabilities, rises staff sickness level
etc. in precise manner. In the Beverley Care Home, new operational managers are appointed in
place of other operational management for handling overall healthcare practices. But due to lack
of leadership and managerial expertise all operation managers unable to work in unity caused by
they unable to deal with different issues. But wilt the support of this plan, each operation
manager will enable to improve provision and patient’s care by cooperating their staff in the
workplace and explains them their roles and responsibilities so that each can perform better.
Thus, this plan will bring furious outcomes for the individuals in the healthcare practices.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above findings, it can be concluded that development of operational
management skills is very necessary task to a health care professional for properly practicing in
the workplace. The operational manager plays an effective role in properly managing different
operations of Beverley Care Home. It can be also concluded that upper management at this

healthcare organisation needs to be focused on developing its different skills and abilities. For
example; an effective skill of leadership will enable to upper management to systematically lead
different people in daily operations healthcare service. Different professionals of Beverley Care
Home need to adopt and use some effective theories of leadership in order to improve
capabilities of their roles in healthcare practice. Upper management of organisation have to
follow the specific plan of change to implement its decided change in daily healthcare practices
and operations.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ali, A., Wang, H. and Johnson, R.E., 2020. Empirical analysis of shared leadership promotion
and team creativity: An adaptive leadership perspective. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 41(5), pp.405-423.
Alsunbuli, A., 2020. Leadership and change management in advancing hybrid operating rooms
into interventional cardiology in hospitals within the National Health Service. Future
Healthc J. 7(Suppl 1). pp.s6-s7.
Campbell, L.A and et.al., 2020. Quad Council Coalition community/public health nursing
competencies: Building consensus through collaboration. Public Health Nursing, 37(1),
pp.96-112.
Coetzer, M.F., Bussin, M. and Geldenhuys, M., 2017. The functions of a servant
leader. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), p.5.
Counte, M.A and et.al., 2019. Global advances in value-based payment and their implications for
global health management education, development, and practice. Frontiers in public
health, 6, p.379.
Driskell, T., Salas, E. and Driskell, J.E., 2018. Teams in extreme environments: Alterations in
team development and teamwork. Human Resource Management Review, 28(4),
pp.434-449.
Freeburg, D., 2020. An information-based approach to organizational change
management. VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems.
Hoch, J.E. and Dulebohn, J.H., 2017. Team personality composition, emergent leadership and
shared leadership in virtual teams: A theoretical framework. Human Resource
Management Review, 27(4), pp.678-693.
Kantanen, K and et.al., 2017. Leadership and management competencies of head nurses and
directors of nursing in Finnish social and health care. Journal of research in
Nursing, 22(3), pp.228-244.
Liang, Z and et.al., 2018. Development and validation of health service management
competencies. Journal of health organization and management.
Lopes, L.N., 2019. Assessing the interaction between leadership and management competencies
and health services accreditation (Doctoral dissertation).
Mertens, W. and Recker, J., 2020. How store managers can empower their teams to engage in
constructive deviance: Theory development through a multiple case study. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, p.101937.

Norström, A.V and et.al., 2020. Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability
research. Nature sustainability, pp.1-9.
Reeves, S and et.al., 2017. Interprofessional collaboration to improve professional practice and
healthcare outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (6).
Sallis, J.F and et.al., 2016. Use of science to guide city planning policy and practice: how to
achieve healthy and sustainable future cities. The lancet, 388(10062), pp.2936-2947.
Savage, M., 2020. Transforming medical competency into medical management capability:
developing physician leaders by finding management in medicine.
Stevenson, J., and et.al., 2018. Perspectives of healthcare providers on the nutritional
management of patients on haemodialysis in Australia: an interview study. BMJ
open. 8(3).