Servant Leadership Model and barriers to integrating this model in healthcare
ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
*DNP Class: Collaboration in Healthcare Delivery
* Textbook: Collaboration Across the Disciplines in Health Care by Brenda Freshman, Louis Rubino, and Yolanda Reid Chassiakkos. 2010 (SEE UPLOADED COPIES OF TEXBOOK REGARDING THIS TOPIC/ASSIGNMENT
*ASSIGNMENT:
- Identify a leadership development theory or model: Servant Leadership Model
- Explain the model
- Discuss barriers to integrating this model in healthcare.
* See below articles and information that can help you to write the paper. Also see uploaded articles.
* I’m a nurse practitioner (Advanced practice nurse). This assignment is for a DNP (Doctor of nursing practice) class and the grading is rigorous including grammar and APA style.
*Please don’t start with sentences that start with “this, these, it…etc” this is vague and not use in formal writing. Need to specify what we are talking about. Also don’t use citations in the middle of the sentence. Avoid “as well as” as much as possible.
Thank you!
***Article:
Trastek, V. F., M.D., Hamilton, N. W., J.D., & Niles, Emily E,B.S., J.D. (2014). Leadership models in health care-A case for servant leadership. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 89(3), 374-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.10.012
Our current health care system is broken and unsustainable. Patients desire the highest quality care, and it needs to cost less. To regain public trust, the healthcare system must change and adapt to the current needs of patients. The diverse group of stakeholders in the health care system creates challenges for improving the value of care. Health care providers are in the best position to determine effective ways of improving the value of care. To create change, healthcare providers must learn how to effectively lead patients, those within health care organizations, and other stakeholders. This article presents servant leadership as the best model for health care organizations because it focuses on the strength of the team, developing trust and serving the needs of patients. As servant leaders, health care providers may be best equipped to make changes in the organization and in the provider-patient relationship to improve the value of care for patients.
Health care providers can assume many leadership roles as a part of their professional responsibilities. A summary of leadership models that have been used in the health care industry is given in the subsections that follow. An examination of their goals and strategies can help identify a model that can best lead to the reforms necessary to achieve the primary goal of increasing value by improving care and lowering costs.
It is important to state that there are many components of leadership that are critical to success including integrity and professionalism, setting vision, strategy, operating tactics and aligning resources, inspiring others, and, most importantly, execution-actually moving the ball in a positive direction. A particular model of leadership implicitly includes all these components but may promote different ways in how execution of the plan is accomplished.
Servant Leadership Model:
Servant leadership, a model first articulated by Greenleaf,16 focuses on serving the highest needs of others in an effort to help others achieve their goals. Servant leadership focuses on the leader's development through awareness and self-knowledge. Self-reflection and awareness enable a leader to understand his or her purpose, beliefs, and individual characteristics. This process of reflection leads to moral insights that develop one's personal conscience as well as core ethical and moral beliefs. As a component of the moral core, Greenleaf called for servant leaders to take into consideration the effects of their actions and the actions of the individuals that they serve "on the least privileged in society." As a moral core develops, the servant leader implements those internalized vinues and attitudes to the skills, behaviors, and interactions involved in leadership.17
Spears18 identified the qualities and characteristics of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. These characteristics, along with a moral core, drive servant leaders to help people meet their goals and overcome challenges. Many of these characteristics involve interpersonal interaction and contribute to strong relationships and trust between leaders and others. If, as discussed in the section on Improving Quality and Lowering Cost to Increase Value, a patient has a high degree of trust in the health care provider and the health care team has a high degree of mutual trust, then that trust will improve the quality of care and lower the cost of care, thus improving value. For example, ongoing provider-patient high-trust relationships will facilitate more efficient and lower cost care because repeated diagnostic procedures and treatments can be prevented. These strong trust relationships can create a steady stream of patients for health care providers and decrease the need for provider marketing, thereby potentially decreasing the cost of care to the patient.
Servant leadership aligns well with the needs for leadership in health care because health care providers' work, and their life calling, is to serve their patients. The ethical and moral aspects of servant leadership require a health care provider to put the physical, emotional, and financial needs of the patient first. The skill set of listening, empathy, awareness, healing, and persuasion all contribute to a healthy health care providerpatient relationship. These interpersonal skills overlap with patient-centered communication, which has "been linked to outcomes such as patient satisfaction, adherence, and more positive healthoutcomes."19 Servant leadership, as it overlaps with patient-centered communication, would build trust between health care between health care providers and patients.
Servant leadership will enable health care providers to create positive patient outcomes by promoting change in patient health behavior. Self-determination theory describes how factors such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness interact to motivate individuals to change.20 Autonomy refers to the level of intrinsic motivation driving behavioral change. Competence refers to the patient's confidence and ability to change.20 Relatedness refers to the patient's perception "of being respected, understood, and cared for."20 Health care providers can affect these factors and motivate patients to change.20 Health careproviders, functioning as servant leaders, can provide patients with the skills, tools, and feedback necessary for self-determination.
As discussed earlier, teamwork is an essential element of health care delivery. Doctors, nurses, administrators, and allied health staff allied health staff work together in teams to diagnose and treat patient illness. Servant leaders can build a community in which team members are committed to putting the patient's interest first and organize team members to achieve the goal of providing high-value patient care. By helping other health care providers pursue and achieve their goals, servant leaders can inspire high performance and innovation throughout health care. More efficient medical procedures, innovative medical equipment technology, and new treatments are possible in an environment in which servant leaders encourage and serve other health care providers to achieve their goals, which in turn will translate to better safety, outcomes, service, and efficiencies within the health care system, increasing the value equation for the patient.
Barriers*** Although there is a great deal of alignment of servant leadership when working with a team (big or small) in caring for patients, it does not fit every situation. It may lack the speed needed when an issue is urgent, such as a code or an operating room emergency. Depending on the leaders' abilities, this model can at times present lack of clarity and not be the best to address conflict. In the final analysis, it depends on how the leader leads and the strength of the team that has been developed.
CONCLUSION
The challenges facing health care require strong leadership. The model of leadership will vary depending on the situation, and in reality a leader may exhibit a blend of leadership models. The purpose of leadership is to work with others to improve the situation. Because health care is about people caring for others and there should be alignment with how we treat patients and how we work together as staff, servant leadership may be considered a dominant model. Servant leadership is best aligned with the professional and ethical duties of health care providers in delivering the highvalue care patients deserve. Servant leadership focuses on trust and empowerment in both the patient relationship and the health care provider team relationships. The challenges faced by the health care system extend beyond the clinical setting. Servant leadership can also stimulate necessary change so that all health care stakeholders focus on serving others: their patients and their staff. By aligning health care stakeholders to serve patients and each other, a more sustainable health care system providing an improved value equation of highquality care and lower cost is possible.
OTHER ARTICLES:
- Galuska, L. A. (2014). Education as a springboard for transformational leadership development: Listening to the voices of nurses. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 45(2), 67-76. DOI:10.3928/00220124-20140124-21
- Song, J. (2018). LEADING THROUGH AWARENESS AND HEALING: A servant-leadership model. The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 12(1), 245-284.
- Lacroix, M., & Armin, P. V. (2017). Can servant leaders fuel the leadership fire? the relationship between servant leadership and followers’ leadership avoidance.Administrative Sciences, 7(1), 6. DOI:10.3390/admsci7010006
