Healthcare Management and Leadership: Managerial Challenges Facing Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

This paper sought to study issues which may hinder leadership management by health care managers whenexecuting their management functions and objectives in practice. The managerial drivers included: rules,initiatives, emotions, immediate action and integrity. This paper describes the drivers of managementleadership by managers in healthcare institutions to implement their organizational objectives. The findingson perception towards delivery, performance and professional satisfaction by healthcare managers has put alot of emphasis on resistance to change and the lack of commitment of employees (the dimension ofemotions) to explain the obstacles faced by healthcare managers. The finding of our data suggests that adriver of emotions is the most critical obstacle to healthcare management.Purpose: This research was carried out to investigate on the impediments facing healthcare practioners withregard to their delivery, performance and professional satisfaction. The study involved effective drivers ofmanagement, which constituted individual obstacles that healthcare administrators and physicians faceduring their leadership and managerial execution.Materials and Methodology: A mixed method of qualitative (focus group discussion) and quantitative (asurvey with a questionnaire) approaches was applied to this study. These involved group discussion ofhealthcare employees and administrators in public healthcare hospitals in a Canadian province. The totalnumber of surveyed healthcare managers was 182.Results: The years of practice for most healthcare mangers was found to be a factor in delivery. Young andfresh graduates though are very productive cannot deliver not unless they have accumulated relevantexperience to master those disciplines of healthcare management and administration. Additionally it wasalso found that those managers who had held management position for over twenty years become lessproductive. Thus from the responses of healthcare managers, there should be rotational leadership andemployee growth to prepare young but able future leaders. With regards to the drivers of management, itwas established that the driver of emotions holds the highest consideration to delivery, performance andprofessional satisfaction with the kind of leadership exercised by healthcare managers. This driver had85.67% of the respondents who agreed, 11% were neutral and 10% disagreed. Other drivers were; driversof rules, which after analysis, was found to have 80% respondents who agreed with it, 8.33% were neutral while 11.57% disagreed with the driver. The driver of initiatives had 74.33% responses from agreeingmanagers, 20% were neutral while 17% disagreed. The driver of integrity had 75.33% respondents whoagreed with the driver, 20.67% were neutral while 4% disagreed. The driver of immediate action had66.67% of the respondents agreeing, 27.33% were neutral while 6% disagreed. The summary of the reporthas been presents in table 4.Conclusion: Our research discusses the significance of understanding the managerial obstacles faced byhealthcare managers when exercising their leadership roles so as to have effective delivery, performanceand professional satisfaction. We also discussed how the nature of healthcare managers’ measures variesbetween the managers employed in government and private institutions. Using descriptive Analysis, ourresearch studied the managerial obstacles that hamper the healthcare managers in implementing theirobjectives to achieve defined leadership. The findings supported our hypothesis that the main obstaclesfaced by healthcare managers are related to the drivers of emotions. Further this study also indicates thatthe category of immediate action such as too many emergencies and urgent issues going unresolved withoutsolutions would be perceived by healthcare managers as obstacles.

Keywords: Healthcare leadership, Managerial execution, Professional satisfaction