Leadership and Management Reflection in Healthcare

Part one;

Effective leadership and management are fundamental to healthcare that enable healthcare professionals to provide high quality, safe and integrated care to patients. Through following appropriate leadership and management styles in healthcare, care professionals can implement continuous quality improvement into practices and conduct an effective teamwork process. In this essay, I will use the Gibbs (1988) reflection model to discuss my management and leadership experiences throughout the project during the module. In this essay, I will reflect on the issues I experienced while following the effective leadership and management technique throughout the project. In this reflection, I will reflect on my self-awareness, self-realization, professional strengths and limitations by using the Gibbs reflection model. Here I will critically reflect on how my values, understanding and principles affect my leadership and management practices. Finally, I will discuss what I have learnt throughout the management and leadership practices and how this learning will help me in my future practices as a registered nurse.

There are several definitions of leadership and management in healthcare. In simple words, effective leadership is the practice that directs the entire workforce towards achieving the common organisation goals through promoting the continuous professional development of the workforces. As mentioned by Gopee and Galloway (2017), in healthcare, effective leadership can be defined as the process through which care professional can promote quality improvement of the healthcare practices and enhance the productivity of the entire workforce as well as of the entire healthcare organisation. Effective leadership is important in modern healthcare in many aspects such as in developing effective mentorship, promoting transparent communication between service providers and services users, performing risk assessment and carrying out effective quality improvement (Oleribe et al. 2019).

Throughout the module, I have learnt a lot regarding leadership and management in healthcare. Here I will use the Gibbs (1988) reflection model to discuss my experience regarding effective leadership and management while working on the project. There are six stages in Gibbs' reflection model such as description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan (He et al. 2018.).

In the first stages, description, I can describe the event or situation that I experienced throughout the module. During the module, I worked closely with my team members. Here I faced issues with the communication styles and mentorship my team leader, as mentioned by Oleribe et al. (2019), effective; leadership is strongly associated with good mentorship which enables the mentor to guide the followers in a positive way to accomplish the task effetely thereby achieving common organizational goals. While started working on the project I had a lack of knowledge on using theories and model of healthcare management. I also had a poor understanding of the overall structure of the project. I discussed these issues with my team leader, but I hardly got any positive response from him rather he advised me to search online on the healthcare theories and apply them in the project. On the other hand, I faced severe communication issues with my mentor. I have requested my mentor to help me understand how I can structure the entire projects by using good models of leadership and using effective budget management techniques. My mentor was also busy with the other team members so he could not provide me with more time to solve my queries. As argued by Sfantou et al. (2017), great leadership in healthcare is not only deliberate and thoughtful but also is associated with developing effective communication with team members to solve all their queries and issues. I have also faced conflict with team members regarding using the evaluation of the leadership and management theories in the NHS framework. Due to my poor spoken English, I was unable to develop good rapport and understanding with team members while working on the project.

While reflecting on the event that I experienced throughout the project I feel that I was quite nervous and lack of self-confidence during the start of the project. I also had a feeling of helplessness while working with the team members as I get little support from my team members. However, through reflecting on the event I feel that I needed to be more patient and calmer in these overmentioned events rather than being so nervous and excited. As mentioned by Spehar et al. (2017), effective leadership and management in healthcare are associated with developing self-confidence, and feeling of self-esteem in team members thus promoting their professional and personal development. Through reflecting on the event, I realize that I had a feeling of lack of self-esteem that made me nervous during the module while working on the project. Here I feel that my mentor was not unsupportive rather he just wanted me to be self-dependent to gather sufficient knowledge on the project. Additionally, I also feel that my mentor was providing me with a little support just because he wanted to push my inner effort and strength to solve any challenge by myself.

By evaluating the usefulness of the above-mentioned events, I can say that the experiences that I gathered throughout the project were full of positive and negative aspects (Clay-Williams et al. 2017). One of the positive aspects of this project was it was highly informative that improved my knowledge of leadership and management in healthcare, different management theories and their evaluation in the healthcare context. As mentioned by Yang and Fry (2018.), for implementing effective leadership in healthcare, it is important to have strong knowledge of different leadership and management models. These models will help me in my future practice as a registered nurse to manage and lead different situation effectively. Throughout the project, I also gathered strong knowledge of the professional skill that is important to be a good leader or manager in the nursing field. A good leader must have strong communication skill, good self-confidence, strong self-esteem, good decision-making skill and quick problem-solving ability (Alilyyani et al. 2018). The project was highly useful for me to make me realise the importance of team working skill, adaptability patience, politeness and confronting skill in effective leadership and management in healthcare. As argued by Hargett et al. (2017), while it comes to develop effective leadership and management skill in the healthcare context, nurses need to develop a good understanding of different leadership and management styles and their application into practice. While working on the project during the module, I gathered good conceptualization on the situation, transformation, transactional, autocratic and democratic leadership styles. Along with these positive aspects associated with the project, there were some negative aspects that I faced throughout the module. During working on the project. I faced severe team conflict that was developed due to the miscommunication between me and them. As argued by Ginter et al. (2018), good leaders and managers must have the skill to manage the team conflict systematically thereby managing a productive organizational culture. In my team, there was an unhealthy competition among some of the team members that affect the goals and work process of the entire team. I received poor support and cooperation from the team members regarding accomplishing the project. Most of the times team members try to show their professional skill and expertise rather than working as a team to achieve the common project goal. This behaviour made me nervous and reduce my self-confidence.

By analysing the above-mentioned events I can say that, despite all the issues that I faced during the module, the project was benefitting and helpful to me in many ways ((He et al. 2018). The limited support that I gained from my mentor pushed me to develop my self-confidence to deal with any issues by myself. My mentor wanted me to manage these project-related issues by myself and solve them accordingly by applying my right decision-making skill. Through working on this project, I was highly helpful because it assisted me not only to develop my professional knowledge on leadership and management in the healthcare context but also to promote my personal development such as improve my problem-solving skill, decision making skill, communication skill and team working skill (Tretiakov et al. 2017). While working on the project with different team members I developed good adaptability skill, that will assist me in the future workplace to work in the different healthcare environment. Despite the poor cooperation of team members, I enjoyed the group working with them on the project that assisted me to develop my concept on many unknown facts such as the history of leadership and management in NHS and the application of different leadership model in the current nursing context. As argued by Weech-Maldonado et al. (2018), the reflection will not only reflect on the personal strengths buts also on the personal limitations or areas of improvement. Throughout the project, I realised that I have a poor theoretical concept of different leadership and management models in healthcare. I also found out that, I had poorly written communication skill and poor sentence formation skill, that can pose barriers to maintaining effective communication with services users in my future workplace.

From the overall reflection, it can be concluded that the project was highly useful and informative for me that helped me to develop professional knowledge on headship and management in healthcare. It enabled me to develop my skill such as communication skill, decision-making skill, time management skill, team working skill and problem-solving skill. The challenges that I experienced during the module such as poor support from team members and lack of communication. However, these challenges assisted me to improve my self-confidence and independence to solve any issue by myself rather than becoming nervous.

In the actional plan, I have set many objectives that I need to fulfil to promote my professional and personal development thereby developing effective leadership and management skill in me. The first objective of my actional plan is to improve my verbal and written communication skill. As mentioned by Cope and Murray (2017), in effective leadership in healthcare, nurses must have good communication skill that can assist them to interact effectively with patients and doctors. For meeting this objective, I will attend regular group discussion with my team members and team leader regarding different project topic. The second objective is to improve my leadership and management skill. For meeting this objective, I will closely work with the team leaders and project manager to learn from their work process, leadership skill and management techniques (Al-Hussami et al. 2018). I will also request them to give me valuable advice regarding how to develop good leadership skill that I can apply in my future work as a registered nurse. The third objective is to improve my knowledge of different leadership and management models and their application in a different nursing context. For this, I will research different leadership and management articles, books and magazine. The fifths and last objective are to improve my quick decision making skill. Quick and right decision-making skill is crucial for healthcare and nursing leaders that assist them to make the right decision in any difficult situation. Doe meeting this objective, I will take challenges by involving myself in critical healthcare management projects and solve the issues regarding the project without seeking help from others.

Part two:

Leadership and management are crucial in health and social care to promote the effective involvement of carer and service users in the planning and development of healthcare. Through applying appropriate leadership and management techniques healthcare leaders can direct as well as motivate both the services providers and the service users to take an active part in decision making and problem-solving in the care pathways. In this second section of the essay, I will evaluate that what I have learned from the module regarding the effective leadership and management in healthcare in relation to promoting carers and service user’ involvement into the healthcare practice.

While working on the project during the module, I have gathered a good understanding of healthcare leadership and management. This knowledge is helpful for my future workplaces as a registered nurse, where I can motivate my patient as well as my team members to work in partnership thereby developing a high standard of care.

Throughout the project, I have developed a good knowledge of good mentorship in leading the entire team in the right direction. In modern healthcare, nurses act as the healthcare manager or mentor who provides effective guidance to their subordinates and service users thereby working in a synergetic manner with all stakeholders to achieve the common healthcare objectives (Wolf, 2017). Based on the Leadership Continuum Model of Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H Schmidt, presented different leadership styles that a manager can use while going through the continuum (Mistry et al. 2020). These leadership styles are good decision making, selling decision, developing innovative ideas, problem-solving, defining limits and motivating subordinates to more towards the right direction to meet their objectives. While working closely with different team leaders under their team, I have learned the different techniques or styles of leadership and management such as transformational, transactional, situational, autocratic and democratic leadership. During the module, I have gathered the understanding that registered nurses need to understand that what is the appropriate leadership or management techniques that they can apply in the practices to promote services user involvement in their care process. As argued by (0, while it comes to involve service users and the cares, a healthcare manager must ensure that the leadership styles will be appropriate and productive for both of them (patients and carers).

While working on the project I have learned how the effective leadership and management process can assist a manager to manage good balance among manifold roles. In my future work as a registered nurse, I can apply good leadership and management techniques to perform all the tasks associated with promoting patients and care provider’s involvement. For example, through using the Transformation Leadership approach I can involve patients to discuss the choices for treatment, their pre-medical history their past life, the genetic history of any illness and tier hobby. As argued by Mistry et al. (2020), transformational leadership is associated with making the effective transformation of the decision, values and stakeholder’s productivity that sometimes can interfere with the traditional values and belief of the stakeholders. My knowledge of the transformational leadership that I gathered through my mentor, will assist me to provide proper learning and development opportunities to my subordinates thereby improving their professional standard to engage them more into them.

Throughout the module, I have developed strong communicating and interactive skill, that are important in involving patients and service users in practices. My verbal communication skill will assist me to maintain a transparent information delivery system in the workplace, through which I can provide all the important information regarding patients’ health and wellbeing to the doctor, health staffs and family members (Kalaitzi et al. 2017). On the other hand, through using effective written and verbal communication skill I can provide work-related information to all the assistant nurses thereby assisting them to take an active part in enhancing organizational productivity. Here I can use the Transactional leadership approach in my future work to promote the active involvement of care providers in practices. Through transactional leadership, the service users will be rewarded or appreciated for their effort in taking an active part in the patient’s personalized care and promoting the continuous quality improvement of the care process. As argued by Brand et al. (2017), transactional leadership sometimes reuse conflict and unhealthy competition among team member that interfere with the integrity of the healthcare staffs. Through using this leadership approach, I will motivate the cares to adhere to the healthcare policies and legislation to provide safe and high-quality care to patients. Through using clear communication with cares, I will promote their involvement in understating organisational values, healthcare principles and professional ethics that every healthcare staffs need to follow. On the other hand, while communicating with the services users, I will use my empathetic communication skill to promote their active involvement in providing informed consent to nurses regarding treatment and helping nurses to get all the details regarding patient’s health issues, current health status and any queries.

During working on the project, I have learned about the situational leadership model and its application in the healthcare context. As stated by Malloch (2017), Situational Leadership Model presents the resilience and adaptability of organisational leaders to any situation or challenge. Throughout the module I learned that registered nurses must have the strong adaptability skill, which enables the nurse to make effective changes in his or her leadership and management techniques based on the current healthcare context while involving the care staffs and the service users into practices in my future workplace, the situational leadership skill will enable to consider the patient needs, skills and professional knowledge of health staffs, healthcare resources and the number of healthcare professionals in the team (Mousa and Puhakka, 2019). Through using the situational leadership skill, I can make effective changes in the; leadership techniques to provide valuable advice and training to the care staffs to improve a different skill that will engage them more actively in the practices. These skills are medicine management skill, quality improvement in the care process, adhering to healthcare principles and meeting the care standard.

During the module, I have learned the importance of the Actional-Centred Leadership approach and its strong association with good decision making and strong judgemental as well as analysing skill (Azzolini et al. 2018). Actional-Centred leaders must have good decision-making and analysing ability to analyse the group needs, task needs and individual needs. This knowledge on Actional-Centred leadership will assist me as a registered nurse to analyse the personalized needs of each patient that is important to motivate them in the right ways to take part in their treatment process to improves the quality of care. On the other hand, through using the Actional-Centred leadership I will be able to evaluate the career needs, learning and knowledge needs, physical, emotional and financial needs of care staffs (Kalaitzi et al. 2017). Through these needs assessment, I can assist care staffs to meet these needs accordingly by involving them actively in providing high-quality care to patients and maintain their professional integrity as well as accountability throughout their practices.

From the overall discussion, it can be concluded that, throughout the module, I had gathered a good understating of different leadership and management techniques that I can use in my future workplaces as the registered nurses to promote patients and services provider’s involvement. The project assisted me to develop my personal and professional sill such a decision making, time management, analysing, problem solving and adaptability sill. This skill will assist me to apply the best-suited leadership techniques in my future practices to promote the quality improvement of the entire healthcare by involving al the service users and care staffs in practices

Dig deeper into Leadership and Management in Healthcare with our selection of articles.

Reference list:

Al-Hussami, M., Hammad, S. and Alsoleihat, F., 2018. The influence of leadership behavior, organizational commitment, organizational support, subjective career success on organizational readiness for change in healthcare organizations. Leadership in Health Services.

Alilyyani, B., Wong, C.A. and Cummings, G., 2018. Antecedents, mediators, and outcomes of authentic leadership in healthcare: A systematic review. International journal of nursing studies, 83, pp.34-64.

Azzolini, E., Ricciardi, W. and Gray, M., 2018. Healthcare organizational performance: why changing the culture really matters. Annali dell'Istituto superiore di sanita, 54(1), pp.6-8.

Brand, S.L., Thompson Coon, J., Fleming, L.E., Carroll, L., Bethel, A. and Wyatt, K., 2017. Whole-system approaches to improving the health and wellbeing of healthcare workers: a systematic review. PloS one, 12(12), p.e0188418.

Clay-Williams, R., Ludlow, K., Testa, L., Li, Z. and Braithwaite, J., 2017. Medical leadership, a systematic narrative review: do hospitals and healthcare organisations perform better when led by doctors?. BMJ open, 7(9).

Cope, V. and Murray, M., 2017. Leadership styles in nursing. Nursing Standard, 31(43).

Ginter, P.M., Duncan, W.J. and Swayne, L.E., 2018. The strategic management of health care organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Gopee, N. and Galloway, J., 2017. Leadership and management in healthcare. Sage.

Hargett, C.W., Doty, J.P., Hauck, J.N., Webb, A.M., Cook, S.H., Tsipis, N.E., Neumann, J.A., Andolsek, K.M. and Taylor, D.C., 2017. Developing a model for effective leadership in healthcare: a concept mapping approach. Journal of healthcare leadership, 9, p.69.

He, K.N., Parkinson, L. and Doyle, A.K., 2018. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle.

Kalaitzi, S., Czabanowska, K., Fowler-Davis, S. and Brand, H., 2017. Women leadership barriers in healthcare, academia and business. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal.

Malloch, K., 2017. Quantum leadership: Creating sustainable value in health care. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Mistry, M.V., Devi, A.S., Suji, M. and Yadav, P., 2020. Impact of Transformational Leadership on Patient Safety & Outcome--A Systematic Review. Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, 14(4).

Mousa, M. and Puhakka, V., 2019. Inspiring organizational commitment: responsible leadership and organizational inclusion in the Egyptian health care sector. The Journal of Management Development, 38(3), pp.208-224.

Oleribe, O.O., Momoh, J., Uzochukwu, B.S., Mbofana, F., Adebiyi, A., Barbera, T., Williams, R. and Taylor-Robinson, S.D., 2019. Identifying key challenges facing healthcare systems in Africa and potential solutions. International journal of general medicine, 12, p.395.

Sfantou, D.F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A.E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M. and Patelarou, E., 2017, December. Importance of leadership style towards quality of care measures in healthcare settings: a systematic review. In Healthcare (Vol. 5, No. 4, p. 73). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

Spehar, I., Sjøvik, H., Karevold, K.I., Rosvold, E.O. and Frich, J.C., 2017. General practitioners’ views on leadership roles and challenges in primary health care: a qualitative study. Scandinavian journal of primary health care, 35(1), pp.105-110.

Tretiakov, A., Whiddett, D. and Hunter, I., 2017. Knowledge management systems success in healthcare: Leadership matters. International journal of medical informatics, 97, pp.331-340.

Weech-Maldonado, R., Dreachslin, J.L., Epané, J.P., Gail, J., Gupta, S. and Wainio, J.A., 2018. Hospital cultural competency as a systematic organizational intervention: Key findings from the national center for healthcare leadership diversity demonstration project. Health care management review, 43(1), pp.30-41.

Wolf, J.A., 2017. Patient experience: the new heart of healthcare leadership. Frontiers of health services management, 33(3), pp.3-16.

Yang, M. and Fry, L.W., 2018. The role of spiritual leadership in reducing healthcare worker burnout. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 15(4), pp.305-324.