Leadership in Healthcare Education (Christie van Diggele, 2020) Summary

Reading litearature is to gain experience, knowledge or information, this article by Christie van Diggele, 2020 have taught me alot about leadership. I realized that leadership can be taught and knowledge can be transfered. understanding the difference between managment and leadership is essential to achive and lead toward heathcare organization vision and mission.

The article summary is the following:

Leadership in Healthcare Education (Christie van Diggele, 2020)

Leadership is someone who inspire others’ values and attitude. Leaders act by their skills regardless of the position as teamwork to achieve goals. The question is: Is leadership the same as management?

Management and leadership are supplementary to each other for any healthcare provider. There are some differences, which are summarized in the following table:

There are 3 type of leadership which are transactional, transformational and team leadership. Recently,  Team leadership is the common type by collaborative work of teams and members related to function. Successful team leadership requires different member roles including:

1. Plant: the ‘ideas’ person
2. Co-Ordinator: the ‘chairperson’
3. Monitor evaluator: the ‘critic’
4. Implementer: the ‘doer’
5. Completer finisher: the ‘details’ person
6. Resource investigator: the ‘networker’
7. Shaper: the ‘driver’
8. Team worker: the ‘peacemaker’
9. Specialist: the ‘expert’

To have an effective leadership is to excel many skills. Those skills involve but not limited to:

1. Ability to network professionally,
2. Have strong communication skills  
3. Ready acceptance of feedback and self-awareness
4. Self-management
5. Business Skills
6. Ability to develop others

You will ask, are there any challenges? For sure, challenges will not be absent, but there few tips can be adapted to overcome such challenges, are as the following:

1. Effective planning
2. Educating, training and applying
3. Development, Assessment and feedback
4. Supportive organizational cultures
5. Expanding of professional network outside of organization
6. Mentorship and coaching
7. Enhance teamwork and members engagement
8. Research and attending courses on leadership

In conclusion, leadership is not a position but a character that lead to achieve goals in compliance to organizational vision and mission.

Reference:

van Diggele C, Burgess A, Roberts C, Mellis C. Leadership in healthcare education. BMC Med Educ. 2020 Dec 3;20(Suppl 2):456. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02288-x. PMID: 33272264; PMCID: PMC7712520.