Healthcare Operational Management: Leadership and Therapy

This report delves into the crucial role of operational management within the healthcare sector, specifically focusing on home-care organizations and their application of leadership theories to enhance patient care. It examines how operational managers can leverage their competencies to organize therapy-based activities, such as Karaoke, to improve the memory and overall well-being of patients, particularly those suffering from dementia. The report explores various leadership theories, including Contingency, Situational, and Behavioral theories, and their relevance in motivating staff and engaging patients. It also addresses the challenges of conflict management and team development, proposing the application of collaborative leadership and Tuckman's theory of team development to foster effective teamwork and resolve conflicts among staff members. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of operational managers prioritizing improvements in workplace management, resource organization, and patient engagement to deliver high-quality healthcare services. All of these resources and more are available on Desklib.

Healthcare

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Operational management plays an important in healthcare industry for providing effective
services to patients. It includes developing strategic plans, improvement of quality of services,
organising different activities for depressive patients and more (Homer and et. al., 2019). The
present assignment is going to evaluate how operational managers of home-care organisations
can apply their competencies, in organising therapy based activities. For this purpose, concept of
different models of management and leadership are discussed, with their advantages and
disadvantages. Furthermore, strategies for conflict management and team-development theories
are also evaluated.
Main Body
Operational management is an essential function of healthcare services for efficient
provision and setting of care-services (Kaikkonen and Laukkala, 2016). In home-care
organisations, that concerns mainly on improvement of health of old people or patients suffering
from dementia, their operational managers mainly aim to strike a balance between their needs
and high-tech treatment, for offering preventative services. As dementia patients face problems
in reminding the things and carried out daily routines normally, therefore, home-care centres
provide a number of therapies like Karaoke which is a group-based singing activity, to help them
in increasing their memory power (Klingner, Llorens and Nalbandian, 2015). In organising such
activities, operational managers concern on various factors like how to organise the same in
systematic manner, so that other patients would not get disturbed. Along with this, they also
concern on how to convince patients for participate in Karaoke therapy. This would help in
getting their engagement for longer period. For this purpose, managers concern on developing a
perfect team of staff members, who will help on executing the mind development activities or
group music activities more efficiently (Uzochukwu and et. al., 2015). With this assistance, some
leadership theories that helps operational managers of healthcare organisations in aligning the
management style with practices are given as below :-
Leadership theories
To organise healthcare practices like Karaoke therapy, managers in operation department
are highly responsible for motivating employees and engaging participation of dementia patients
(Gopee and Galloway, 2017). This would help in providing efficient healthcare services for

patients in increasing their memory power and overcoming from depressive state. In this regard,
there are various theories of leadership that needed to be concerned by managers for developing
effective leadership are -
Contingency Theory: This theory states that there is no best way of leadership and
leadership style depends upon various contingent factors (Yakovleva, 2017). There are various
contingent factors in external as well as internal factors which influence decision make of
organisation and leadership style is depends upon contingent factors. These factors consist of
technology, suppliers, consumers, government, competitors etc. This leadership style is very
important as it provide flexibility in management and operations of organisation (Gopee and
Galloway, 2017). Operational managers can adopt this leadership by measuring effectiveness of
their employees and identify factors that help in increasing their performance as well.
Situational Theory: It is created by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard and they believe that
leadership style depends on situational they are dealing with. Operational managers of healthcare
organisations by understanding can develop interaction with employees, to analyse their needs.
Adopting this style, aid managers in motivating their team according to situation, to provide
effective care to dementia patients (Uzochukwu and et. al., 2015). It will help in creating flexible
and comfortable work environment as well. Employees working in healthcare organisations
needs to work carefully as they are dealing with patients who require proper attention and more
support in living normal life. Situational leadership style can boost the training routine of
employees and help them in increasing their ability to organise Karaoke therapy in effective and
efficient manner (Yakovleva, 2017).
Behavioural theory: This theory focuses on specific behaviour and actions of leaders
rather than their characteristics or traits. Behavioural theory suggested that effective leadership
departments upon many learned skills (Klingner, Llorens and Nalbandian, 2015). This theory
believes that effective leadership depends upon how they delegate task or communicated as well
as try to motivate their employees. Behavioural theory is based on the principle that behaviours
can be refer as condition that have specific response to specific stimuli. This theory can be
applied by operational managers of Care Homes in providing extra benefits employees
(Kaikkonen and Laukkala, 2016). This will create urge in each and every employee to work with
their best skill and ability, for providing proper care to patients suffering from dementia.

All these leadership theories that bring together individuals with same objective, traits,
qualities, behaviour etc. help operational managers of Care home to offer best therapies to
patients. But in organising Karaoke therapy which is group based learning activity, the major
problem that operational managers face is – conflicts among staff members. This would highly
affect entire outcomes or process of care activities (Homer and et. al., 2019). So to bring
collaboration and conflict resolution, managers can adopt collaborative leadership theory, whose
concept is given below :-
Collaborative leadership theory: According to David Chrislip and Carl Larson,
collaborative leadership is a process of bringing individuals that work together towards a mutual
benefit. It involves communicating information between co-workers and other organisations to
help them make informed decisions. The qualities of managers for this type of leadership style
involves willingness to take risk, being passionate about the cause, able to share knowledge &
power etc. It is expected out of leaders that they work towards a common goal or objective,
along with receiving mutual benefits both for the employer as well as for team.
Operational managers of Care Home by adopting this theory, can increase sharing skill
and knowledge within staff. This would also help in reducing the level of complexity within
members. It requires a systematic work environment, wherein a number of parties are
encouraged to work together towards a common goal (Yakovleva, 2017). This is applied to every
level in healthcare organisation so that there is an active involvement of staff in validating needs
and identifying modifications to address the problems. One of the major problems that occurs in
a healthcare organisation is of overload working hours. Generally during peak season and with
frequent disease spreading, gets a lot of customers to treat. Due to which the employee needs to
work for more than their shift duration (Gopee and Galloway, 2017). In addition to this, the
company prepares charts for every member of the staff. This helps in allocating morning as well
as night job to the people working. Collaborative leadership theory helps the organisation by
bringing people who are willing to work during odd hours of both day and night.
In order to provide collaboration among staff members and resolve conflicts between them,
operational manager of a Care Home organisations can also adopt the concept of Tuckman
theory (Uzochukwu and et. al., 2015). This theory involves 4 stages as forming, storming,
norming and performing, that helps in developing an effective team so that activities like
Karaoke can be organised in systematic and desired way, as described below :-

1. Forming- In this stage, operational manager of Care Home organisations can introduce
the entire team members with each other, in order to make them familiar with each other
(Klingner, Llorens and Nalbandian, 2015). This would help in making an initial
interaction between all people so that they can communicate each other and understand
what roles they have to play, for organising Karaoke therapy in proper way.
2. Storming- By introducing this stage, operational manager of home care organisations can
provide information to each professionals, in understanding their task. Here, to acquire
status and grab control over group, every staff member used to compete with other
professionals (Kaikkonen and Laukkala, 2016). During this stage, conflicts will get raised
among staff members. For resolving this conflict, operational managers will try to fix it
by discussing issues, so as to achieve harmony between them.
3. Norming- After resolving of conflicts, staff members of health care organisations will
develop feeling and establish positive relation towards each other, by developing group
norms and policies in order to avoid conflicts in future and to work for an achievement of
a common company's goal.
4. Performing- This is a stage during which harmony and trust has been established among
medical professionals and practitioners of Care Home organisations (Homer and et. al.,
2019). Staff members will work in cooperation while doing task so as to fulfil objectives
and goals of offering best healthcare practices like Karaoke therapy in efficient way.
For organising the entire activities related to Karaoke therapy, as an operational manager in
home care sectors, I will give priority to analyse area of improvement first. It involves increasing
abilities to manage overall workplace, like development of effective team, engaging participation
of dementia patients in group music activities, organising entire resources and more. For this
purpose, I will prepare checklist on entire activities – Personal care, select familiar songs, choose
music source, utilise music for alter moods, check system and technology used for playing music
and other activities, etc. In addition to this, before executing entire process will check so that
higher outcomes can be obtained.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Yakovleva, N., 2017. Corporate social responsibility in the mining industries. Routledge.
Gopee, N. and Galloway, J., 2017. Leadership and management in healthcare. Sage.
Uzochukwu, B. S. C. and et. al., 2015. Health care financing in Nigeria: Implications for
achieving universal health coverage. Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice. 18(4).
pp.437-444.
Klingner, D., Llorens, J. J. and Nalbandian, J., 2015. Public personnel management. Routledge.
Hughes, M. and Wearing, M., 2016. Organisations and management in social work: Everyday
action for change. Sage.
Kaikkonen, N. M. and Laukkala, T., 2016. International military operations and mental health–A
review. Nordic journal of psychiatry. 70(1). pp.10-15.
Homer, C. and et. al., 2019. Midwifery continuity of care. Elsevier.
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