Essay Example on Leadership in Healthcare Orgs: A Transformational Style

Introduction

The leadership of healthcare organizations is a complex task. There are many activities involved, schedules to be planned, teams to be coordinated, and patient safety must be ensured. Through this assignment, I evaluated a leader who will serve as my preceptor. I held an interview and asked him several questions pertaining leadership in health care management. From the interview, I learnt that the best leadership style in managing healthcare organizations is transformational leadership.

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Leadership Style of My Chosen Leader

The leader I have selected is Jonathan Lee. He holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) and is an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). Lee is one of the medical directors of a primary care practice called first care. Lee’s role is ensuring that all activities in the institution run smoothly and at times, he carries a patient load. Lee is a mentor to others and since he has served as a licensed practical nurse (LPN), registered nurse (RN), and nurse practitioner (NP), he has a lot of experience and likes mentoring those under him. Lee’s activities are not just limited to the institution, he is visible outside the organization and participates in community outreach programs and fairs.

Lee is a transformation leader. Transformational leadership contributes to creating positive change among workers through one maxim: motivation. Everything is based on transforming others to help each other and being close to the worker to better transmit the company's objectives and stimulate his/her potential. According to Sfantou et al. (2017), transformational leadership offers an advanced level of practice that maximizes and enhances the application of specialized competencies and nursing knowledge to respond to patient needs; providing comprehensive care, more motivation for healthcare employees, assertive communication, organizational change, having care management with a future vision and an adequate application of social marketing, identifying health needs and problems of the individual, the family, and the community.

Regarding Lee’s role in communication, he likes motivating and empowering others and bringing positive change to the organization. Lee is viewed as a change agent because he encourages innovation and invention. His ultimate goal, as indicated through his leadership, is to increase motivation, commitment, group awareness, and, ultimately, to improve the performance of the team being managed.

Lee’s Organization Role as it Relates to Quality, Safety, and Evidence-Based Standards

The concept of evidence-based standards provides physicians the most effective and efficient method of treating patients for better results, as well as increasing treatment alternatives and minimizing the risks of complications that compromise health and safety (Reed, 2017). Lee works closely with healthcare professionals to determine the best way to integrate evidence-based practices into their workflows. Regarding Lee’s role interdisciplinary, he is a full-time primary care nurse practitioner and works pro re nata (PRN) at the local hospital taking care of acute patients. Additionally, Lee is also heavily involved with the community and does many community projects. There are several ways Lee facilitates, participates, or fosters interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration. First, he is a true advocate for the patient. Secondly, he has an ever-evolving relationship with the patient as well as with their providers, specialists, families, and caretakers. There are several ways Lee champions quality and safety in his organization and the general public health system. He creates and supervises different scenarios of medical interventions in which each care process is documented and allows guiding other health professionals in practices aligned to evidence-based standards. These interventions help in clinical decision making.

Lee’s Qualifications to Be a Doctoral Preceptor

For one to be selected to serve as a preceptor, they must have leadership experience and cultivate new learners in the way of professional growth. Lee is qualified to be a doctoral preceptor since he is a true leader who cares about his patients and the community and ensures all parties are involved in inpatient care. He also collaborates well with other leaders to have the best outcomes for his patients. Lee is not only trusted but also respected in the organization and community. Lee has several connections to formal power and he leverages these connections to assist in quality improvement projects and evidence-based practice change. He has connections with many other community leaders and other primary care facilities and local hospitals. Through these connections, he can mobilize for support, resources, and finances from different stakeholders.

An Opportunity for a Doctoral Project

One gap that needs to be addressed is the high percentage of hospitalizations of elderly clients. The gap can be connected to the organizational strategic priority since the main goals of First Care is to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations in the elderly population. Normally, these are patients over 80 years of age, with extreme fragility, both functional and cognitive impairment, and who have multiple pathologies. The stress felt by the elderly patient when faced with an illness is enhanced when they need to use the resources of the health system or require hospitalization, since their dependency increases when a high degree of uncertainty is associated with hospitalization (Mannion & Davies, 2018). First Care proposes home care services for the elderly, so when the acute health problem can be solved at home, professionals propose this alternative to the patient who ultimately voluntarily chooses this care. Patients cared for in their own homes avoid the problems that elderly people suffer in hospitalization, such as delirium or loss of walking ability, and also improves the quality of life of the patient and his family.

Lee’s Approach to Data Management

Regarding the approach to data management, Lee has embraced technological innovations, the internet of things (IoT), and electronic data management and storage systems. Virtually every industry is affected by the ongoing flood of data, but nowhere is this trend more impacting than healthcare. Due to a combination of different factors, the use and dependency on data in healthcare is increasing exponentially (Stanfill & Marc, 2019). There is a rapid growth in the amount and complexity of data in the routine operation of hospitals. Data management is one of the biggest challenges in the field of healthcare and life science. It is not just about intelligently storing the enormous amount of data, but also using the unstructured data efficiently. Not only is the amount of data to be stored in the healthcare system growing exponentially, the periods in which the data must remain available are also increasing disproportionately.

Traditional storage systems are now reaching their limits when it comes to technological developments in healthcare. The key to modern data management in healthcare is to simplify the storage infrastructure and support different workflows at the same time which can only be achieved through electrical storage systems (Abouelmehdi, Beni-Hessane, & Khaloufi, 2018). The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) is proving to be one of the biggest drivers. In Lee’s organization, networked devices for the collection of patient data are used to enable improved diagnoses, specialized treatments, and proactive care.

Conclusion

Thus, Lee ensures that First Care storage infrastructure offers the highest possible scalability, flexibility, and portability - especially when the amount of data becomes so large that the migration of data from one format or provider to another can require considerable investments. Lee believes that healthcare providers must take their long-term data requirements into account to find the best solution, both financially and operationally, and to react quickly to future changes. As can be observed, transformational leadership style is best suited for healthcare organizations.

References

Abouelmehdi, K., Beni-Hessane, A., & Khaloufi, H. (2018). Big healthcare data: preserving security and privacy. Journal of Big Data, 5(1), 1-19. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322345990_Big_healthcare_data_preserving_security_and_privacy

Mannion, R., & Davies, H. (2018). Understanding organisational culture for healthcare quality improvement. British Medical Journal, 6(363), 1-4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329260604_Understanding_organisational_culture_for_healthcare_quality_improvement

Reed, S. B. (2017). Five key attributes of leadership. Healthcare Financial Management, 71(7), 48-51. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8345&context=dissertations

Stanfill, M. H., & Marc, D. T. (2019). Health information management: implications of artificial intelligence on healthcare data and information management. Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 28(1), 56-64. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6697524/

Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E. (2017). Importance of leadership style towards the quality of care measures in healthcare settings: A systematic review. Healthcare, 5(4), 73-90. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320437263_Importance_of_Leadership_Style_towards_Quality_of_Care_Measures_in_Healthcare_Settings_A_Systematic_Review