The world of healthcare seems to be in the news constantly and mostly for the wrong reasons. The high cost, the lack of quality and available service and the lack of compassion are just a few of the topics that seem to dominate the healthcare industry today. The area of Servant Leadership within health care has become a topic that more and more providers are attempting to adopt to allow a better relationship to be developed between the provider and the patient.
Based upon the 10 characteristics developed by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 servant leaders are describes as “those who achieve results for their organizations by attending to the needs of those they serve”, health care providers are using this approach to extending the caring ways of the profession an additional level.1 With the health care industry no longer being the risk free third party system to a collaborative approach that has employees, employers and health care providers each sharing the way, finding a way to get the best care at a fair price is a constant challenge. This has lead to an approach that more and more health care providers have undertaken that has moved away from the Hippocratic Oath approach to one that is more aligned to the complexities that are involved with the reimbursement system that is being followed that tends to overemphasize management.
Being able to empower the individuals to search for and the health care providers to deliver services that are in a servant leadership style will be a vital first step in helping to achieve better results in the health care industry from my perspective. People want to be engaged and also have some level of control over their environment. A servant leader recognizes that the people doing the work generally have the best ideas about how to improve the processes they participate in.2
For the near future, we need to help create a health care system that will operate on the foundation of providing long term value service that will replace the current emphasis on cutting short term costs. Physicians can heal and solve the medical problems of their patients in many inventive ways. The best results occur when those administrators and chiefs support the doctor’s decisions and provide the technology and resources to carry out a given procedure. Those situations that involve disputes with management and department heads, resulting in grudging willingness to go along with the doctors idea for treatment, do not lead to the most positive outcomes because they do not have resources to fully carry out the procedure.3 Servant leaders are drawn to a purpose greater than themselves and are great listeners that have empathy for the well- being of others. Most people who go into the health care profession are doing so because they are caring and compassionate and are looking to help individuals. I believe that we need to go back to this approach and remove the many obstacles that are in the way of offering the best health care to all of us.
Works Cited
1 Nursing Spirit Journal. N.p., 2 Oct. 2012. Web 19 Jan. 2013. http://online.umary.edu/nursing-journal/nurse-leadership/servant-leadership-improves-the-delivery-of-nursing-practice-and-healthcare
2 Servant leadership: Helping people come alive. N.p., 20 July 2012. Web 19 Jan. 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viral-mehta/servant-leadership-helpin_b_1678375.html
3 Servant leadership in health care. Cohen, Mark. N.p., 11 Apr. 2011. Web 19 Jan. 2013. http://markdanielcohen.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/servant-leadership-in-health-care/
It was recently brought to my attention via a discussion board assignment that doctors have a completely different set of trait qualities that actually conflict with those of a great leader. According to White (2011) “Among other traits, such as openness and conscientiousness, doctors are selected into the profession—and valued—for their empathy and agreeableness.” Agreeableness is often associated with poor leadership. What is your opinion on this? Do you think this may be one of the reasons why the healthcare industry established its own leadership traits or is it based more on the decline of the Hippocratic Oath? It was a very interesting article.
White, C. (2011, June 21). Why doctors can’t always be leaders. Retrieved from http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20003443