Presence as a Leadership Skill in Health Care, Essay Example

Presence is one of the critical areas of health care leaders. The three cornertsones of healthcare management are resilience, agility and presence. Presence is a skill and ability that enables the health care manager to – through effective communication – develop an insight and understanding of needs.

Recent patient-centered approaches of health care leadership (Forman, 2010, p. 47) call for increased participation in order to connect with patients. Communication with patients and skills to effectively evaluate feedback and implement changes based on patients’ insights is a skill that can support innovation and the development of new ideas. Human decision making (Forman, 2010, p. 55) is closely related to presence.

Dana and Olson (2007, p. 7) state that most effective leaders are transformational. This means that they listen to patients and workers and create an inclusive culture. This is indeed an important skill in health care management. By listening to suggestions and developing ideas together, they are able to recognize new, better ways of doing things.

According to Kotter (2002), communication is essential to engage stakeholders, however, the evaluation of the situation, challenges and needs for change also have to be understood through “presence”.

Campbell (2008) states that a health care manager, when implementing Kotter’s model for change, needs to consider how the decisions and initiatives would affect patients. Further, leaders have to understand how medical staff’s roles would change and whether or not they would have future training requirements. This understanding can only be achieved by active listening and communication, which is determined as “presence” in health care management and within a clinical unit.

References

Campbell, R. (2008) Change management in health care. The Health Care Manager Volume 27, Number 1, pp. 23–39.

Dana, B., Olson, D. (2007) Effective leadership in long term care: the need and the        opportunity. American College Of Health Care Administrators Position Paper. Retrieved from http://www.achca.org/content/pdf/ACHCA_Leadership_Need_and_Opportunity_Paper_Dana-Olson.pdf

Forman, H. (2010) Nursing leadership for patient-centered care: authenticity, presence, intuition, expertise.Springer Publishing.

Kotter J, Cohen D. (2002) The heart of change: real life stories of how people change their organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press; 2002.