The Importance of Change Management in Healthcare
Discuss about the Health Care Leadership and Change Management.
For any organization to experience improvement in its productivity and overall performance through time, then the facets informing change and performance improvement are very critical (Choi, and Ruona, 2011). However, implementing change and performance improvement especially in the healthcare setting is quite difficult. This is because most healthcare practitioners view their profession as having two edges; a vocation as well as a profession. Moreover, most of these employees are in most of the time suspicious of the action of the healthcare administration besides being resistive to crucial changes impacting healthcare provision. While the top management may be desperate for change and overall organizational performance improvement, the staff can view such changes as exploitative in adding on their roles and responsibilities (Weberg, 2010). To this end, there is a need for healthcare management leadership to institute a working organizational culture that has the abilities to let employees embrace changes to healthcare practice. This calls for the need to remove any barriers hindering change implementation, promotion of effective communication throughout the healthcare facility, staff capacity building and adopting relevant leadership skills in effecting the same. This paper will extrapolate on the role that healthcare leadership plays in facilitating change in a healthcare facility setting.
Change management has received many definitions over the last several decades. A succinct definition relates to change management to the exhaustive process of availing new ways of thinking and doing things among a particular group of people. Change management is instrumental in elevating organizational effectiveness and performance improvement. Organizational changes are for the specific reason for the desire to achieve specific desired future outcomes. In a healthcare setting, this may connote to the general improvement in the way of handling health records, providing better healthcare to patients, reduction of redundancies in healthcare supply chain management among other objectives. Healthcare leadership must aim at planning and advocate for change at the individual healthcare employee level to facilitate overall organizational change embracement (Al-Sawai, 2013). The leaders must take change management as an enabling framework and an opportunity for managing the people side of change. This goes a long way in counteracting resistance to change besides increasing the speed for change adoption of the same among employees.
An important facet in effecting change management and performance improvement lies with the realization of the influence healthcare leaders can have on their subordinates. The adoption of healthy leadership theories, strategies, leadership characteristics, and styles can go a long way to this end. Leadership refers to the general behavior of a person when given the opportunity of directing the achievement of shared goals and objectives (Sullivan, and Garland, 2010). The primary role of leaders is to influence and steer organizational activities and coping with any imminent changes that may emanate from internal operations or external pressures. A setback in the consideration of leadership styles in the healthcare sector is the fact that most change and leadership theories were advanced for the business.
Role of Leadership in Facilitating Change
However, healthcare professionals have endeavored to customize them to fit for the needs of healthcare. Leadership like change is dynamic and therefore healthcare leaders ought to acquaint themselves with the latest facets informing efficient leadership (Curtis, de Vries, and Sheerin, 2011). Although the Great Man Theory is of the assumption that only particular people are endowed with leadership skills, several behavioral theories have been advanced in the last several decades indicating any one individual can be an influencing leader. These include authorization, laissez-fair, democratic, contingency, situational and interactional leadership style theories. Depending on which leadership styles leaders take in their leadership role, they have abilities influencing their juniors either positively or negatively with regard to changes and performance improvement.
For a long time, interactional leadership has been labeled as an important leadership style in the healthcare sector with abilities to create positive workplace environment besides nurturing organizational cultures. Interactional leadership lays emphasis on influencing and shaping a particular organizational environment by promoting positive relations between leaders and their followers. The aim is to create a harmonious work place environment in which all parties feel part and parcel of the organization. Interactional leadership by and large promote the facets informing supportive leadership. Proponents of this school of thought assert that supporting and forging productive relationships with staff alleviates the possibility of influencing the positively besides being motivated to work towards achieving organizational goals. Overly, interactional leadership theories are founded on the premise that individuals tend to be happier and satisfied while at work when they are in the company of supportive leaders who empathize at the employee’s personal level.
It is important to note that healthcare systems are made up of a multiplicity of healthcare professionals groups, specialties, and departments with complex interactions amongst them. The complexity of these interactions is compounded by the constraints advanced by the different disease areas; multisectional and multidirectional goals and multidisciplinary staffing arrangements. Moreover, within this complex healthcare system, numerous sub-organizational cultures are eminent to arise which might be in support of or in conflict with one another. Fronting organizational change and performance improvement in such a set-up is quite a huddle for health care organizational leaders. To this end, leadership should be tailored to capitalize and take the diversity opportunity presented by the system to efficiently utilize resources when planning for organizational changes and management processes (Anderson, and Anderson, 2010).
In a fast changing global environment, people have increasingly become more informed of their fundamental freedoms and human rights and therefore approaching them for change purposes ought to be done with utmost care. Transformational leadership is such one instrument that can be exploited to this end Salanova et al. (2011) observe that transformational leadership advocates for a shared responsibility between the senior management and the staff in effecting organizational objectives and goals. To this end, employees are actively involved in giving the opinion on what is supposed to be the ideal situation for various concerns. Transformational leaders are also bound to embrace hands off, charismatic and transitional leadership as opposed to the transactional leadership that only focus on employee supervision and group performance. The style advances that employees ought to be involved throughout the change process from the very planning to evaluation and monitoring.
Leadership Theories and Styles in Healthcare
This approach counteracts the resistance that can emanate from a dictatorial leadership style in which employees are only spelled on what do at the implementation stage. Healthcare leaders ought to embrace the virtues of respect, integrity, empathy, and recognition of the abilities that others hold in shaping the overall organizational change. This by and large assists to mold the positive culture of the health facility. Employees feel wanted, motivated and encouraged to achieve more for the organization. In building the culture of the healthcare facility, transformational theory stresses the significance of sharing the mission of the facility with the employees through proper communication channels. In doing so the leadership is able to thwart any resistance when it comes to effecting organizational changes or improving the performance of the already available policies (Fugate, Prussia, and Kinicki, 2012).
Leaders should use powers conferred to them advance to build the capacity of their employees. Transformative leadership gives emphasis to effective communication of the leader’s vision of the organization to their juniors (Weberg, 2010). This should be done in a way that employees are able to perceive meaning besides being exiting and able to create harmony and collectivity of purpose. The leader who has a vision and is generally able to influence and empower others can be termed as a transformative leader. Change management and performance improvement ride on this yardstick since the leader is in a position to motivate performance and infiltrate change facets upon employees.
Another important leadership style that plays a significant role in facilitating change and performance improvement is collaborative leadership. Collaborative leadership refers to the assertive and cooperative engagement of employees in work for the mutual advantage of both the organization and employee’s themselves. This symbiosis association allows the management to communicate important information to employees to enable them to make informed decisions and choices regarding their work performance. This kind of collaborative communication enables healthcare management to capacity build their staff since it encourages a productive dialogue between multidisciplinary stakeholders on the facility’s best causes of action. It is on such a platform that changes management and performance improvement concerns ought to exploit in order to smoothly trickle down important changes in healthcare strategies, policies, programs, and methodologies (Annandale, and Witz, 2013).
Employees are in a position to share knowledge, skills, experience and best practices effectively decreasing the complexity of the healthcare system. Employees engaged with different roles and responsibilities need to tap from the leadership in a bid to give their opinion concerning changing healthcare demands. In further building employee’s capacity (Peirson, et al. 2012) observes that collaborative healthcare leadership demands a synergistic work place culture in which collective efforts are central in effecting planned changes and improving the performance of already existing programs.
Interactional Leadership
A favorable workplace culture has been labeled by change and performance improvement proponents as an ideal factor in realizing the same. A condusive work environment with a pleasant culture allows employees to concentrate on the achievement of the set goals and objectives. Healthcare leaders are obligated to advance their staff with such an environment and play the critical role of promoting and building on existing organizational culture. When leaders openly and clearly communicate what their vision and mission are like to the staff, it is easy to infiltrate new facets of change when they do come up. Changes could emanate from the need to embrace new technologies and working systems internally or the need to meet conditions set by the external environments such as compliance with national and international policies.
MacKenzie, Podsakoff, and Podsakoff, (2011) observe that the mare interruption of the existing way of doing things by changes is bound to have little or no effects on staff attitudes with an efficient work place culture in place. Work place culture constitutes facets such as stable mission and vision statements, formidable core values, work place traditions, relations and attitudes. Leaders must asquint themselves with welcoming traits in leadership in order to continue being effective influencers and motivators to their staff. This includes being respectful and empathic to employee’s needs; great integrity; effective communication skills; and productive personal, interpersonal and public relation skills. Such leaders advance a charismatic viewpoint to their leadership styles which make them good influencers of change and performance improvement initiatives. With a favorable work place culture, organizational structure is bound to strengthen and strategies put better realized.
Effective communication by itself can go a long way in advancing the changes sort by the healthcare facility. The institution of effective communication channels between the management and their staff is one strategy that the management can easily achieve its target (Leeuwis, and Aarts, 2011). Like has been mentioned, healthcare facilities are very complex institutions with heavy activities going on in them. To this end, there is a very high likelihood of there being a breakage of communication in which distorted or malicious information can easily be distributed. A harmonious system of information distribution within the complexity of the hospital is a great cure for this likelihood. Good communication networks within the health facility are also good indicators of a working institution. It is on such a platform that new work place practices, organizational cultures, strategies, policies, and programs can be effected for improved organizational performance (Zheng, Yang, and McLean, 2010).
Transformational Leadership
Against such a background, healthcare facilities are in a position to bench mark on new changes and performance improvement requirements of existing programs and policies. Bench making provides the management with an opportunity to lay new targets for the organization’s change outcomes. In doing so, the staff is overly involved in planning and implementation of the new changes besides allowing them to have an insight of what the eventual outcome of the change will look like from the beginning. With the acknowledgment that such efforts are bound to be curtailed by resistance, then benchmarking for the future healthcare requirements is best conducted through a collaborative approach (Davies, Tremblay, and Edwards, 2010). Like has been mentioned, this assist to make employees feel as being part and parcel of the change process as opposed to being sidelining by the senior management.
Change management and performance improvement are underpinned by change theories that have been developed by theorist over the last several decades. One such theory was developed by Kurt Lewin back in the 1940 and is still of great usage in today’s organizational change endeavors. Lewin’s theory: Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze connotes to the three stages of change process he perceived organizational change follows. He premised his theory on the analogy of altering the shape of an ice block through first unfreezing the block to make it amenable to change, then molding it to the shape one wants before finally refreezing it to an entirely new shape.
Though this analogy, healthcare leaders can endeavor to influence change at the workplace through a change process with distinct stages. Leaders can prepare employees to receive change by making adequate plans of orienting them to a new way of thinking and doing things. Lewin’s model gives change managers an opportunity of not leaping into changes before making an adequate arrangement of containing the requirements in change. This preparation and motivation for change relate to the unfreezing stage. Organizational leaders ought to sensitize staff why change from the current way of doing things is necessary and why they ought to embrace it when it finally comes (Sutherland, 2013).
The unfreezing stage creates a lot of uncertainties and there is a likelihood of resistance but at the change stage, these people are more or less ready to relive the uncertainties and embrace the incoming new ways of doing things. Leaders are obliged to vividly communicate to organizational stakeholders how the change being sort will be of benefit to both the healthcare facility and individuals. The healthcare facility is set to refreeze to a new way of operations when stakeholders have finally accepted the proceeds of change. Refreezing can be characterized by there being a new organizational chart or new roles and responsibilities have been given.
Building a Positive Organizational Culture
John Kotter’s developed the 8-step change model after evaluating changes in over 100 organizations 8-step change model (Kotter, 2012). In his development, Kotter observed that for organizational change to occur, leaders ought to create a sense of urgency among employees that achieving a certain objective through a different perspective can be of great benefits. To achieve the new opportunities, then leaders need to mobilize their employees towards the same by building formidable coalitions. This can only be done when employees are oriented towards the same through the institution of productive visions and initiatives which align with the overall organizational culture and visions. It is upon the leaders to inspire their employees to accept the new changes through effective communication, and motivation effectively counteracting change barriers (Baker, et al. 2010).
This actions by and large assist in removing any barriers and resistance to change that may emanate during the change process. Employees ought to be actively involved in the whole change management process to allow them to own it. Kotter saw the importance of the generation of short term wins in the change process as a motivating factor as opposed to having a rigid long term goal. In managing the changes sort, there is a need for balancing change management with change leadership. This calls for adequate planning, motivation, and alignment of employee’s skills and strengths for the eventual change take off (Swanson, et al. 2012). Change is instituted by properly communicating and connecting employees’ new and changed attitudes and behaviors’ to organizational success. Healthcare leaders ought to remain transparent throughout the change process to allow employees to decipher why the change was actually important and valuable to the organization. This transparency is significant in counteracting resistance to change.
In the 1960’s, Kubler-Ross’s change curve received unprecedented recognition as change model in the 1980s. In the model, Kubler reasoned there are five stages of grief associated with the process of change. These are denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. The model was formulated to help organizational leaders to empathize with their staff during the process of change implementation (Kübler-Ross, 2009). On the downside of the change curve, employees are highly likely to react negatively to the whole change idea are bound to go under denial, express anger and possibly may become depressed. However, since change is not all that bad, they will later bargain with themselves to embrace it and eventually accept change.
Capacity Building and Effective Communication
In the three organizational change models described here, it has been deduced that organizational leadership is very vital in influencing the successful achievement of change and performance improvement. Leaders are critical facets in realizing the achievement of laid organizational objectives and goals and must, therefore, acquaint themselves with the necessary tools and instrument for the same (Mick, 2015, p.159). These include having abilities to realize their roles and responsibilities in facilitating change, the assumption of favorable leadership styles and policies and having modest characters that make them approachable and flexible to other peoples opinion besides. It is only with these facets that they can effectively influence change in the organization, build staff capacities for the same, communicate their vision, and cultivate formidable organizational cultures. Moreover, health care leaders need to draw from the insights advanced by organizational change models to inform their approach in effecting change in their health facilities. Performance improvement also needs to draw from these insights for the betterment of existing policies and strategies (Al-Sawai, 2013).
Healthcare practice changes are always welcome so long as they are geared toward the improvement of the quality and safety of patients. Besides of being cautious of resistance to change which can be mitigated through effective communication, transparency, inclusivity in all stages of the change process, negotiation and motivation, change process ought to be tailored to cater for the needs of the local population (Rosenberg and Mosca, 2011). To realize this, healthcare organizations need to tap from the forces motivating transformation and utilize them in effecting necessary healthcare changes (Lee et al. 2013).
References
Al-Sawai, A. (2013). Leadership of healthcare professionals: where do we stand?. Oman medical journal, 28(4), 285.
Anderson, D., & Anderson, L. A. (2010). Beyond change management: How to achieve breakthrough results through conscious change leadership (Vol. 36). John Wiley & Sons.
Annandale, E., & Witz, A. (2013). The challenge of nursing. In Challenging Medicine (pp. 58- 73). Routledge.
Baker, R., Camosso-Stefinovic, J., Gillies, C., Shaw, E. J., Cheater, F., Flottorp, S., & Robertson, (2010). Tailored interventions to overcome identified barriers to change: effects on professional practice and health care outcomes. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 3(3).
Curtis, E. A., de Vries, J., & Sheerin, F. K. (2011). Developing leadership in nursing: exploring core factors. British Journal of Nursing, 20(5), 306-309.
Choi, M., & Ruona, W. E. (2011). Individual readiness for organizational change and its implications for human resource and organization development. Human Resource Development Review, 10(1), 46-73.
Conclusion
Dixon, M. L., & Hart, L. K. (2010). The impact of path-goal leadership styles on work group effectiveness and turnover intention. Journal of Managerial Issues, 52-69.
Davies, B., Tremblay, D., & Edwards, N. (2010). Sustaining evidence-based practice systems and measuring the impacts. Evaluating the impact of implementing evidence-based practice, 166-188.
Fugate, M., Prussia, G. E., & Kinicki, A. J. (2012). Managing employee withdrawal during organizational change: The role of threat appraisal. Journal of Management, 38(3), 890-914.
Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard business press.
Kübler-Ross, E. (2009). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy and their own families. Taylor & Francis.
Lee, S. Y. D., Weiner, B. J., Harrison, M. I., & Belden, C. M. (2013). Organizational transformation: A systematic review of empirical research in health care and other industries. Medical Care Research and Review, 70(2), 115-142.
Leeuwis, C., & Aarts, N. (2011). Rethinking communication in innovation processes: creating space for change in complex systems. Journal of agricultural education and extension, 17(1), 21-36.
MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2011). Challenge?oriented organizational citizenship behaviors and organizational effectiveness: Do challenge?oriented behaviors really have an impact on the organization’s bottom line?. Personnel Psychology, 64(3), 559-592.
Mick, S. S. F. (2015). Enduring conflicts in the American health care system. The Journal of Health Administration Education, 32(2), 159.
Peirson, L., Ciliska, D., Dobbins, M., & Mowat, D. (2012). Building capacity for evidence informed decision making in public health: a case study of organizational change. BMC Public Health, 12(1), 137.
Rosenberg, S., & Mosca, J. (2011). Breaking down the barriers to organizational change. International Journal of Management and Information Systems, 15(3), 139.
Sutherland, K. (2013). Applying Lewin’s change management theory to the implementation of bar-coded medication administration. Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, 8(1-2).
Sullivan, E. J., & Garland, G. (2010). Practical leadership and management in nursing. Pearson Education.
Salanova, M., Lorente, L., Chambel, M. J., & Martínez, I. M. (2011). Linking transformational leadership to nurses’ extra?role performance: the mediating role of self?efficacy and work engagement. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 67(10), 2256-2266.
Swanson, R. C., Cattaneo, A., Bradley, E., Chunharas, S., Atun, R., Abbas, K. M., … & Best, A.
(2012). Rethinking health systems strengthening: key systems thinking tools and strategies for transformational change. Health policy and planning, 27(suppl_4), iv54-iv61.
Weberg, D. (2010). Transformational leadership and staff retention: an evidence review with implications for healthcare systems. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 34(3), 246-258.
Weberg, D. (2010). Transformational leadership and staff retention: an evidence review with implications for healthcare systems. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 34(3), 246-258.
Zheng, W., Yang, B., & McLean, G. N. (2010). Linking organizational culture, structure, strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management. Journal of Business research, 63(7), 763-771.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
