Managing Diverse or Multidisciplinary Teams in Healthcare Provision - Report Example

Health Leadership Managing Diverse or Multidisciplinary Teams The phrase a ‘diverse team’ when used in public health and nursing environment refers to the valuing of the individual differences that exist between the nursing staff and patients, and creating a culture where each of the two parties can contribute, thrive and take part in health and social care provision (Howard, 2012). Many a times, it encompasses any problem that may cause less favorable treatment or health care to a patient. Further, it can be used in the same context to make reference to the need to take into account lower socioeconomic individuals of dissimilar races and getting to understand how health and societal welfare matters impact them (Lahiri, 2008). As such, diversity is a term that is used simply to draw a meaning of ‘difference.’ It involves recognizing personal as well as group differences, treating people as persons, and attaching positive value on differences in the society and in the healthcare workforce (Howard, 2012). The differences that are indicated in this particular context can occur in the lines of race, socioeconomic position or status, political beliefs, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, gender, physical abilities, ethnicity and other ideologies. As most countries in the world become more racially and ethnically diverse, there is an increasing need for healthcare systems, managers, nurses, support staff, physicians, and allied health care providers, that can respond to and reflect or deal with an increasingly multifaceted patient and employee base in order to overcome difficulties or barriers in healthcare communication and change in treatment procedures and methods (Greig, Entwistle & Beech, 2012). It is therefore unmistakable that the community is divided into two groups, in the dimensions of socioeconomic representation, as the minorities and majority groups. For instance, the United States’ population has the white population making a larger percentage of their population, while the Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians make a small segment of their total population therefore forming the minority group (Howard, 2012). Since the representation of the minority group is still slim in the healthcare team in most countries, it is therefore imperative that the management of most hospitals becomes committed to employing a team that is culturally diverse and have the capability of using varied skills to respond to and understand the various medical needs, preference and biases associated with healthcare provision and reception (Greig, Entwistle & Beech, 2012). Health care is experiencing a fuming talent war, with most healthcare organizations competing to attract and hang on to proven leaders adept to quality, tactic, technology, and other drivers within the post-reform background (Borkowski, 2009). Diversity is part of what needs to be balanced in order to attain improved patient satisfaction, a stronger bottom line, clinical outcomes and successful decision making processes. Diversity is therefore; a problem because what some patients or healthcare personnel accept in their culture as a valid procedure for treating a particular ailment may not be accepted by another patient or nurse from a different background, and therefore, affect how they respond to treatment or administer medical procedures respectively. Thus necessitating the need to have a diverse medical staff whose differences in terms of skills and understanding of procedures are natured by the hospital management to come up with a positive environment that is centred around cultural competence to attain quality healthcare provision (Finkelman, 2011). Leadership Theories Applicable in Incorporating Diversity in Healthcare Provision Diversity and cultural competence are responsible for driving quality within the health and public science environment, therefore the leadership style employed by healthcare managers in handling patients and healthcare support staff should take into account their diverse backgrounds in order to achieve the organizational goals. Servant Leadership Theory and Situational Leadership Theory are two sample leadership theories that are applicable in ensuring that healthcare organizations come up with a diverse leadership team that drives organizational success and cultural competence, ensure benefits for physicians, patients and the broader workforce, and finally assess its impact on governance, quality of care, and operations in addition to financial goals (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). Incorporating a competent health leadership that takes into account diversity therefore teaches the healthcare managers how to mentor, recruit, retain and promote diverse healthcare staff to eradicate high turnover rates, come up with productive, and cohesive cross-cultural work teams, make use of various assessment tools built around a host of diversity issues, and gain basic knowledge on how to implement any initiatives fostered by diversity. Servant Leadership Theory by Robert Greenleaf is a leadership style that shifts away from the traditional mode of leadership where a manager could accumulate and exercise power by virtue of being at the top of the management pyramid (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). As such, a servant leader is one that shares power, puts the needs of the people he or she is leading first and help them develop. Greenleaf was chary of those leaders that focus on leading first, “perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possession,” as he states in his essay. Instead, Greenleaf recommended making serving a main concern, with the intent of “making sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.” And as he states, “caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built” (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). This responsibility can therefore be shifted to health organizations which are many a time considered as large, powerful, impersonal and complex. However, it is important to note that health organizations are not always competent but at times corrupt. From the above description, it can be deduced that Servant Leadership Theory draws a thought of a leader who is not recognized as such, but leads by merely meeting the needs of the team that he leads. As such, a servant leader leads by example, has high integrity, and leads with a lot of generosity and mainly makes use of attributes such as empathy, stewardship and commitment to personal growth, active listening, and the development of others as indicated in the model below (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). http://www.menorahleadership.com/sl-p9.html In health leadership, attributes of servant leadership can be used to empower employees and encourage them to be innovative. This means that the healthcare organizational top management shares major decision making powers with the medical support staff that work directly with patients that are arguably better aware of what is actually needed to serve patients and remain competitive because of their vast knowledge of what is taking place on the “front lines” of health care provision (Howard, 2012; Salisbury & Byrd, 2011). For any healthcare organization to remain competitive, active listening is fundamental. Nurses and physicians must stay connected to patients and health industry developments and they need to listen and remain approachable to patients (Mitchell, Parker & Giles, 2011). This is particularly important because patients have important insights into healthcare service successes and changes that could end up being challenges or ruin the health organisation if not taken into consideration. Awareness and paying attention to significant issues are both paramount to healthcare service provision too (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). Additionally, persuasion is recommended via consensus building and stands in direct dissimilarity to leadership styles that are well thought-out as involving more command and control (Russell & Stone, 2002). Tactics that are coercive in nature that are applied in more centralized health organizations can be mainly destructive. From a medical staff development perspective, empathy refers to or considers the perspective that both the patients and medical staff have good intentions. It lays emphasis on open mindedness in listening to decisions made in the organization (Russell & Stone, 2002). Healing may be looked at as too soft for various health organizations, but at its core it calls attention to the development of individuals in the medical support staff from both a personal and professional point of view (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). For instance, encouraging learning, constructive feedback systems and development along with the accomplishment of health care tasks or responsibilities is the center of attention of this attribute. On the other hand, foresight is closely related to awareness but focuses on the capacity of the medical staff to make use of past lessons for attaining future successes. In this regard, a commitment to the growth of the general medical staff is also guaranteed, as is the importance attached to developing talent or skills of the support staff (Salisbury & Byrd, 2011). At its best, servant leadership can help a health organization run more effectively. A good example of a health organization that has made use of this theory is the healthcare bellwether, ‘Johnson & Johnson’ company (Russell & Stone, 2002). Its organizational belief to serve customers, communities, stakeholders and employees makes use of an important characteristic of servant leadership (Mitchell et al., 2010). Such organizations in general strive to develop managerial talent and build leaders that get higher from lower positions and are therefore focused on ensuring service to the medical management team in the firm and patients (Witt/Kieffer, 2010). Since it involves taking a stance of what is good for patients is good for the health organization, this culture encourages the medical staff to offer services of high quality and value in regard to price and utility to patients (Propp et al., 2010). On the other hand, Situational Leadership Theory by Dr. Paul Hersey refers to a philosophy that embraces the idea that instead of using one style of leadership, managers in organizations should change their style of leadership depending on the maturity of the employees that they are leading and the details of the task or responsibility that they are handling at that point in time (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). By applying this theory, leaders in the health organizations are able to place less or even more emphasis on the task at hand, and more or less importance of the relationships with the medical staff or support staff that they are leading, giving a close consideration to what is required to have the task accomplished in a successful manner (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). According to model illustrated below of situational leadership, there are four main leadership styles that are employed in the process and they include telling/directing, selling/ coaching, participating/supporting, and delegating as represented in the image below (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013). Telling involves a scenario where leaders in the medical staff tell their colleagues what to do. For instance, it is possible to direct a colleague or give a step by step procedure on how to perform a caesarean section (CS) operation in your absence since the leader could be having experience in that field (Chesluk & Holmboe, 2010). This is particularly applicable where new recruits or nursing staff that a leader is working with are placed below the bottom level of the scale in terms of maturity and as such lack the skill, knowledge or confidence in handling the particular task that they are given. Leaders therefore need to tell them what to do or be pushed to work, thus developing skills and becoming knowledgeable from what they are told or directed to do, and the end result is an experienced personnel capable of providing quality health care. A leader has therefore understood how diverse these individuals are as they have different levels of knowledge and treats them according to their level of understanding. Coaching is imperative for managing diverse medical staffs that need to be directed and be given information via thorough communication with their leaders. As such, leaders sell their messages concerning a particular practice in order to persuade the other staff members to join. For instance, leaders may coach their staff to appreciate how important developing positive therapeutic relationships with their patients help understand the patients better since it would be possible to treat them as they desire after understanding their biases (Borkowski, 2009). These employees may have the will to work but lack the skill to accomplish the tasks in a successful manner. Participative and Delegating styles of leadership are similarly critical in managing diverse medical staffs, as they involve working with the team closely while sharing decision-making roles and passing tasks to employees while monitoring their progress with less involvement respectively. However, their application is limited to leading medical staff that have more skills in regard to handling a task but less confidence and ones that are able to work on their own, have strong skills, commitment and high confidence respectively (Witt/Kieffer, 2010). The four leadership styles are therefore applicable for medical staffs that qualify to be classified in the maturity levels indicated in the table below. Maturity Level Appropriate Leadership Style M1: Low Maturity Telling or Directing (D1) M2: Medium Maturity, Limited Skills Selling or Coaching (D2) M3: Medium Maturity, Higher Skills but Lacking Confidence Participating or Supporting (D3) M4: High Maturity Delegating (D4) http://www.peace.ca/leaderwithin.htm Source: (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013) Conclusion From the above analysis, it is evident that managing diverse teams involves understanding various differences that are displayed by employees in order to attain or provide quality health services to patients. Managers in health organizations therefore need to assess various situations or scenarios that surround a particular task (situational leadership) and in certain scenarios lead by example (servant leadership) to ensure that their resources are spread in a reasonable manner and regulations applied are considerate to the differences that every employee has. As much as it may take a lot of time to implement the principles around diverse management, it is imperative to note that it is an essential tool for enhancing workforce and patient satisfaction, improving communication among the medical staff or members of the medical team, and further improve the performance of the health organization. The effective management is therefore informed by cultural sensitivity, flexibility, mutual respect and tolerance for every member of the medical team. References Borkowski, N. (2009). Organizational behavior in healthcare. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Chesluk, B. J., & Holmboe, E. S. (2010). How teams work—or don’t—in primary care: a field study on internal medicine practices. Health Affairs, 29 (5), 874-879. Finkelman, A. W. (2011). Leadership and management for nurses. New Jersey: Pearson. Greig, G., Entwistle, V. A., & Beech, N. (2012). Addressing complex health care problems in diverse settings: Insights from activity theory. Social Science & Medicine, 74 (3), 305-312. Howard, T. J. (2012). Advancing Cultural Diversity in Health Care. Retrieved from http://trainingmag.com/content/advancing-cultural-diversity-health-care Lahiri, I. (2008). Creating a Competency Model for Diversity and Inclusion Practitioners. Toronto, ON: Conference Board of Canada. Retrieved from http://www.conferenceboard.ca/e-library/abstract.aspx?did=2553 Mitchell, R., Parker, V., Giles, M., & White, N. (2010). Review: Toward Realizing the Potential of Diversity in Composition of Interprofessional Health Care Teams An Examination of the Cognitive and Psychosocial Dynamics of Interprofessional Collaboration. Medical Care Research and Review, 67 (1), 3-26. Mitchell, R. J., Parker, V., & Giles, M. (2011). When do interprofessional teams succeed? Investigating the moderating roles of team and professional identity in interprofessional effectiveness. Human relations, 64 (10), 1321-1343. Management and Leadership Theories and Approaches [Course handout]. (2013, Week 3). Propp, K. M., Apker, J., Ford, W. S. Z., Wallace, N., Serbenski, M., & Hofmeister, N. (2010). Meeting the complex needs of the health care team: identification of nurse—team communication practices perceived to enhance patient outcomes. Qualitative Health Research, 20 (1), 15-28. Russell, R.F., & Stone, A. G. (2002). A Review of Servant Leadership Attributes: Developing a Practical Model. Leadership & Development Journal, 23 (3), 145-157. Retrieved from http://www.strandtheory.org/images/Russell_Stone_-_SL_Attributes.pdf Salisbury, J., & Byrd, S. (2011). Why Diversity Matters in Health Care. Retrieved from http://dc3.middlewaygroup.org/Members/patelashok/diversityhealthcare.pdf Witt/Kieffer. (2010). When Healthcare Organisations Cultivate Diversity, Outcomes Improve. Retrieved from http://www.wittkieffer.com/file/thought-leadership/practice/Diversity_Q&A_article.pdf Read More

Leadership Theories Applicable in Incorporating Diversity in Healthcare Provision Diversity and cultural competence are responsible for driving quality within the health and public science environment, therefore the leadership style employed by healthcare managers in handling patients and healthcare support staff should take into account their diverse backgrounds in order to achieve the organizational goals. Servant Leadership Theory and Situational Leadership Theory are two sample leadership theories that are applicable in ensuring that healthcare organizations come up with a diverse leadership team that drives organizational success and cultural competence, ensure benefits for physicians, patients and the broader workforce, and finally assess its impact on governance, quality of care, and operations in addition to financial goals (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013).

Incorporating a competent health leadership that takes into account diversity therefore teaches the healthcare managers how to mentor, recruit, retain and promote diverse healthcare staff to eradicate high turnover rates, come up with productive, and cohesive cross-cultural work teams, make use of various assessment tools built around a host of diversity issues, and gain basic knowledge on how to implement any initiatives fostered by diversity. Servant Leadership Theory by Robert Greenleaf is a leadership style that shifts away from the traditional mode of leadership where a manager could accumulate and exercise power by virtue of being at the top of the management pyramid (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013).

As such, a servant leader is one that shares power, puts the needs of the people he or she is leading first and help them develop. Greenleaf was chary of those leaders that focus on leading first, “perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possession,” as he states in his essay. Instead, Greenleaf recommended making serving a main concern, with the intent of “making sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.” And as he states, “caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built” (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013).

This responsibility can therefore be shifted to health organizations which are many a time considered as large, powerful, impersonal and complex. However, it is important to note that health organizations are not always competent but at times corrupt. From the above description, it can be deduced that Servant Leadership Theory draws a thought of a leader who is not recognized as such, but leads by merely meeting the needs of the team that he leads. As such, a servant leader leads by example, has high integrity, and leads with a lot of generosity and mainly makes use of attributes such as empathy, stewardship and commitment to personal growth, active listening, and the development of others as indicated in the model below (“Management and Leadership Theories”, 2013).

http://www.menorahleadership.com/sl-p9.html In health leadership, attributes of servant leadership can be used to empower employees and encourage them to be innovative. This means that the healthcare organizational top management shares major decision making powers with the medical support staff that work directly with patients that are arguably better aware of what is actually needed to serve patients and remain competitive because of their vast knowledge of what is taking place on the “front lines” of health care provision (Howard, 2012; Salisbury & Byrd, 2011).

For any healthcare organization to remain competitive, active listening is fundamental. Nurses and physicians must stay connected to patients and health industry developments and they need to listen and remain approachable to patients (Mitchell, Parker & Giles, 2011). This is particularly important because patients have important insights into healthcare service successes and changes that could end up being challenges or ruin the health organisation if not taken into consideration.

Read More