Evolving Nature of Healthcare Leadership

Healthcare Leadership

The author of this report has been asked to review and critique an article. The article relates to the general topic of choice, that being leadership of healthcare professionals. The points and parts of this response will include the general focus of the article, the conclusions of the author, a discussion about the report and the opinion of the author of this report when it comes to all of the above. The article chosen for this review and report is from the Oman Medical Journal and was authored by Abdulaziz Al-Sawai. The premise of the article is a question that perhaps many people ask out loud, that being where the paradigm and marketplace stands when it comes to the leadership of healthcare professionals. While there are many differing and valid perspectives when it comes to healthcare leadership, there are many valid viewpoints to consider and the viewpoint of Al-Sawai is certainly among them.

Analysis

Summary

The author of the article makes the point that the leadership theory that surrounds healthcare is "dynamic" and that it changes over time. It is further pointed out that healthcare systems are "composed of numerous professional groups, departments and specialties with intricate, nonlinear interactions between them: the complexity of such systems is often unparalleled as a result of constraints relating to different disease areas, multidirectional goals and multidisciplinary staff. The author of the article then gets into the different types of leadership including transformational, collaborative, distributed, shared and so forth. There is also a focus on conflict management, ethics and the functional results of a given healthcare leadership structure. The points made in the article are not reaching or groundbreaking but they are very common and prescient at the same time. Examples would include that leadership is a shared thing that cannot (and should not) be controlled by a small cadre of people. There does need to be a locus of control among the top executives but it cannot be too constricted either (Al-Sawai, 2013).

Critique

The article overall is quite good. If there is one thing that it lacks, it is focus. The points made are all very good ones but there is a little too much being mentioned and covered and in such a short space that it does not allow for a decent drilling down on any given topic. For example, even if this article only focused on leadership styles and that was it, there was not nearly enough words dedicated to realistically cover what someone would need to learn about the subject. Even so, the points that were made were accurate, consistent with other research and yet admitted that the paradigm is evolving and shifting all of the time. They article also points to the fact that multiple leadership styles can and should be adapted to the healthcare leadership situation and that is a good idea as some people get bogged down with one style or another. Instead, it has to be recognized that different situations call for different leadership approaches and trying to use one at all times is just not going to work. Sometimes, a transformational leader needs to come in and motivate people. Other times, a leader needs to be more transactional and just get things done. When it comes to healthcare, it is important to learn about all of the important topics such as leadership styles, the evolving role of a nurse and how the Affordable Care Act has affected the nursing and healthcare leadership paradigms, just to name a few things (Al-Sawai, 2013).