Leadership has always been a key to the functionality of any work unit. Much attention, however, has been lately paid to the peculiarities of leadership application to clinical practice. Researchers claim that the very notion of leadership in healthcare is closely related to managing the team to an extent, beneficial for the patients (1). In order to comply with the responsibility given to the clinical practice, practitioners from all over the world developed a series of leadership theories to define the best possible option for a unit. To begin with, healthcare as a system is a complicated hierarchy of clinicians, managers, and various external bodies, which makes the concept of leadership plural in this context (2). Such an approach is characterized by power diffusion between a series of responsible leaders.
Leadership theory as a concept stands for the patterns of organizational hierarchy within various units focusing on its major needs and principles. Speaking of healthcare, its primary purpose is to serve and help all the people with no exceptions. Hence, one of the most appropriate theories, in this case, would be the servant leadership approach that stands for placing one’s need in the first place when it comes to the work patterns (3). In this case, the emphasis is put on the patents, who are to benefit from the altruistic behavior. Another important concept is authentic leadership theory defined as the high level of the employees’ engagement in the workplace activities to increase their job satisfaction and hence, productivity (4, 5). In the sphere of healthcare, it is of crucial importance for the workers to be engaged in the process, as they communicate with patients who value when specialists realize and respect the responsibility scope.
When executing power within an organization, one is to consider some potential risks and benefits that result from a particular leadership model. Hence, transformational leadership theory results in both the leader and the follower being able to experience professional growth by interacting with each other (6). Another example of such a collaboration can be traced in the basics of participative leadership theory, which implies the team’s full-scale involvement in the decision-making process. Finally, the transactional leadership theory concerns the ways in which staff members are delegated the major tasks. In this framework, employees are secured in terms of workload, but they have little autonomy in the context of decision-making.
The United Arab Emirates, having one of the most developed healthcare systems in terms of financial aid and technological advancements, still obtains some major drawbacks when dealing with leadership management. Most of these issues are closely related to the country’s cultural background, where democracy is, to some extent, limited by the power of some culturally superior social groups (7). Hence, it would be of great importance to analyze participative theory in the UAE’s environmental patterns. To begin with, such an approach to leadership will be beneficial for staff members who would obtain the feeling of having power over their work as well. As long as employees are heard, their perception of work differs radically in terms of job satisfaction and motivation. The major drawback, however, here will lie in society being unused to such democratic relations, willing to leave the authority to those in power.
References
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Sergi V, Comeau-Vallée M, Lusiani M, Denis JL, Langley A. Plural Leadership in Health Care Organizations. InThe Oxford Handbook of Healthcare Management 2016.
De Zulueta PC. Developing compassionate leadership in health care: an integrative review. Journal of healthcare leadership. 2016; 8: 1.
Alilyyani B, Wong CA, Cummings G. Antecedents, mediators, and outcomes of authentic leadership in healthcare: A systematic review. International journal of nursing studies. 2018; 83: 34-64.
Wong CA, Walsh EJ. Reflections on a decade of authentic leadership research in health care. Journal of Nursing Management. 2020: 28(1): 1-3.
Xu JH. Leadership theory in clinical practice. Chinese Nursing Research. 2017; 4(4): 155-7.
Al‐Yateem N, Al Marzouqi A, Dias J, Saifan A, Timmins F. Nursing in the United Arab Emirates: current challenges and opportunities. Journal of Nursing Management. 2020.