Poor Leadership in Healthcare

Poor Leadership in Healthcare

IDENTIFYING AND REMEDYING

The Ethical Dilemma

A recent study examined some theories of leadership to determine which type or types of leaders affect the quality of care (Firth-Cozens & Mowbray, 2001). The study found that the type of leadership produces stress or well-being of healthcare staff. This, in turn, redounds into the quality of care provided. (Firth-Cozens & Mowbray).

Alternatives

Major failures result from poor leadership (Walshe & Shortell, 2004). They include long-standing problems; key people and other stakeholders' awareness of problems but ignoring them; extensive or immense harm or injury on patients and the resulting huge and additional costs; lack of management systems; and repeated incidents of failures. Long-standing problems have existed for some time but remain unknown. Some key people and other stakeholders in the health facility may have known these issues but did nothing about them. A most obvious consequence of poor leadership is the immense harm on patients. The lack of proper management systems often centers on an individual clinician or a small team running the facility. He believes that most threats to patients' safety result from the failure of systems rather than the leadership's. And incidents of failure keep repeating because the leadership does not learn the lessons taught by these failures (Walshe & Shortell).

III. Approach to Poor Leadership

Failures in healthcare organizations with poor leadership often occur from a lack of basic management systems (Walshe & Shortell, 2004). These basic management systems provide for quality review, incident reporting, performance management and consciousness of these systems as components. Other components of this approach or plan are increased collaboration between managers and clinicians, coherent clinical leadership, introduction of new values and attitudes across all levels, and a sense of empowerment in both the staff and patients (Walshe & Shortell).

IV. Outline of the Plan