Leadership in Health Care Organizations
Effective leadership is quite important in health care organizations because any health care organization is aimed to provide high-quality care and benefit financially at the same time.
Leadership can be defined as the process when one person designates the tasks that should be accomplished and influences the others for their successful implementation. Leaders are common for any organization and health care organizations also need to have successful and well-conceived leader styles.Leadership in Health Care Organizations
A successful leader should surely be adaptable to situations, ambitious and achievement-oriented, cooperative, assertive, dependable, decisive, energetic, persistent, self-confident, tolerant to stress and willing to assume responsibility.
Basing on these very essential qualities leaders create their styles of behavior. A successful leader fully understands the goals and aims of organization and balances them with the existing economic realities.
It is not enough to know the tasks and manage them among the staff. Leaders must make plans and develop tactics to perform the execution of different tasks. In addition a leader in health care organization looks ahead in future and is able to anticipate the consequences of the actions. Health care organizations may have very complex political environment and therefore they demand from the leader quick and sound decisions. Besides good leaders of health care organization know that to win people’s affection and trust they should be aware of their problems, needs and strive for solving them. Thus the communicative strategy used by leaders is based on open and tight cooperation with patients, partners and employees.Leadership in Health Care Organizations
In generally these styles of behavior are aimed to influence the performance of others and for this reason leaders need power. This power can be characterized as formal and informal.
Formal power usually refers to the authority or boss who is officially designated as the leader of an organization. Formal leader is appointed officially and his powers are usually delegated by his accountabilities. His role in the organization is quite important; however it is unattainable from the role of an informal leader.
An informal leader is not appointed officially as the authority or the head of the team. However he provides motivation and inspiration for other members of team. Sometimes the role of informal leader can be even more significant than the role of a formal one, because colleagues are more reluctant to follow the person that occupies the same position with them in the company, has some knowledge and experience to realize the tasks and shares their own views.
Nurse leaders should be aware of political actions because it protects the nursing practice as well as the environment in which nurses work. The change in political actions and in method of health care delivery makes nurses interested in the politics as it has a great positive impact on nursing practice and patients. Therefore the importance of processional organization where nurses can exchange information and be aware if the latest political events increases with the time. Leadership in Health Care Organizations