Collaborative Leadership

Collaborative Leadership The objective of this study is to consider what leadership knowledge and skills are needed during a pandemic situation. The best practices utilized by health care leaders when working collaboratively during a pandemic situation (real or potential) will be According to the work of the Canadian College of Health Service Executives work entitled "The Role of Health Leaders in Planning for an Influenza Pandemic" published in 2006, pandemic planning "is uniquely complex.

From local to international plans, all require a blend of strategic and operational, proactive and reactive, integrated and independent and personal and professional approaches." (p.7) It is necessary that those planning for such a pandemic prepare various reactions to a diverse number of situations and that plans are made in advance of their actual execution. It is necessary that such planning take place across all governmental and health system levels.

Areas of Planning Recommendations made for human resources in planning for a pandemic include the adoption of an approach that is competency-based as well as an engagement of union leadership and the development of a staff rewards and support system. Non-human resources planning involves ensuring the availability of necessary supplies. Recommendations stated include the wide availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ensuring that there is a continuous supply of medical equipment and other health-related supplies.

It is also necessary that scarce supplies security, safety is optimized, and that plans are in alignment with municipalities, utilities and other services of primary importance. II. Collaboration A pandemic situation requires that healthcare leadership have as its goal the collaboration with community partners focused on raising the level of the public's knowledge about the minimization of the impact of the pandemic. This can be accomplished through public education.

Federal and local collaborations include at the federal level manufacture of the vaccine and rapid dissemination following the first human-to-human transmission while the local level ensures proactive healthcare leadership including "extensive self-protection communication to and education of the local community." (Thompson and Corder, 2007, p. 3) This ensure that the public "buy into the idea that they are individually responsible for their health" and that they take action. (Thompson and Corder, 2007, p.

3) Failure at the federal level results in a healthcare system that is overwhelmed while failure at the local level results in healthcare shifting to families that are not trained and deaths from the pandemic as outcomes. The primary concerns are reported at the federal level to be that of mass fatalities while at the local level the primary concerns are an uprising of the public due to the federal government and healthcare system to take care of citizens. The work of Schoch-Spana, et al.

(2007) entitled "Community Engagement: Leadership Tool for Catastrophic Health Events" reports that civic infrastructure "represents that dynamic assembly of interdependent people, voluntary associations, and social service organizations who can pool their collective wisdom, practice experience, specialized skills, social expectations and material assets to work on behalf of constituent members and in many cases for a larger public good." (p.11) Healthcare leadership must interact with the civic infrastructure as it has the capacity to serve "as the circuitry to transmit educational and awareness-raising information, to energize social trust between authorities and communities at-large and to coordinate the respective response and recovery roles of government, business, civic groups, and individuals." (Schoch-Spana, et al., 2007, p.11) The capacity of the civic infrastructure during a pandemic includes the following capabilities: (1) Multifrequency communications network to reach dispersed and diverse populations; (2) Social circuitry to energize trust between authorities and communities at large; (3) Collective wisdom to set policy priorities and inform values-laden health policy decisions; (4) Local knowledge to improve feasibility, reliability, and acceptability of disaster plans; (5) Operational support for professional responders during crisis and recovery periods; (6) Self-organized, innovative solutions when unforeseen needs arise; (7) Rootedness" in place that personalizes communitywide recovery and amasses resilience; and (8) Tax revenue base and in-kind contributions that help mitigate extreme event losses.

(Schoch-Spana, et al., 2007, p.11) Summary and Conclusion Collaboration between healthcare leadership and community agencies, forums, and infrastructure will enable the planning and preparedness necessary to address the event of a pandemic and to mitigate the impact of a pandemic resulting in a better outcome that serves to save lives. Works Cited Influenza Pandemic Simulation: Implications for the United States (n.d.) Booz Allen Hamilton. Center for Health Transformation. Retrieved from:.