Leading Professionally Diverse Workgroups of Healthcare Professionals for Improving Quality of Care

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to unfold the internal dynamics of a workgroup of healthcare professionals and to identify leadership behaviors that can enhance the benefits of professional diversity to improve the quality of care. The present study explores the recent literature on leadership, professional diversity within workgroups of healthcare professionals, and their performance outcomes especially the quality of care. The finding reveals that the sub-group categorization is salient diversity generated process in the profession-based workgroup of healthcare professionals and shared perception of inclusiveness of workgroup leader can reduce the saliency of sub-group categorization and facilitates the full contribution of group members by creating psychological safety climate and workgroup inclusion to enhance the quality of care they delivered. This paper identified the salient process of diversity within the workgroup of healthcare professionals and explores the role of a shared perception of inclusive leadership in enhancing the quality of care, thereby offering a novel framework for future inclusive leadership and quality of care research. Leaders can capitalize on the proposed model to utilize the benefits of the presence of professional diversity within a workgroup of healthcare professionals to improve the quality of care.

Diversity, entrepreneurial innovation, and performance of healthcare sector in the COVID‐19 pandemic period

“…With specific reference to the healthcare industry, several scholars (Bradley, 2020;Gomez & Bernet, 2019;Koopmans et al, 2018;Rosen et al, 2018;Sfantou et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2018;Yousaf et al, 2021) explained that diversity can functionally improve both financial performance and patient care satisfaction.…”

“…With specific reference to the healthcare industry, several scholars (Bradley, 2020; Brimhall, 2019; Gomez & Bernet, 2019; Koopmans et al, 2018; Rosen et al, 2018; Sfantou et al, 2017; Smith et al, 2018; Yousaf et al, 2021) explained that diversity can functionally improve both financial performance and patient care satisfaction. Their various studies revealed that healthcare professionals from different disciplines and levels can enhance the quality of care, improve performance and reduce the mortality rates in the hospitals.…”

Effects of Inclusive Leadership on Quality of Care: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety Climate and Perceived Workgroup Inclusion

“…The psychological safety climate provides an arena where group members can develop a perception that the group has acceptability of their views, which can accelerate the process of information sharing. Inclusive behaviors of leaders are essential for creating a psychological safety climate within groups for improving quality of care [ 45 ], because they engage with staff from different disciplines and hierarchal levels, and encourage true participation within healthcare settings [ 2 , 66 ]. It enables them to elaborate on care-related information within the group.…”

“…Quality of care is considered a performance indicator for healthcare professionals working in groups [ 1 ]. These workgroups, whether working in conventional formations or controlled combinations of professional silos, become multiprofessional in nature and ineluctably acquire the characteristics of professional diversity [ 2 ] due to the presence of two or more individuals with professionally diverse backgrounds [ 3 ]. Based on this premise, the quality of care is mainly attributed to the communication of different care-related perspectives and informational resources among these individuals [ 4 , 5 ].…”

“…Within multiprofessional workgroups, the intertwining effects of diverse professional identities (e.g., doctors and nurses) and well-entrenched status hierarchies yield both high intragroup similarities and high intergroup differences due to differences in knowledge and educational backgrounds. These differences build an individual’s subjective frame of reference (his or her beliefs, expectations, and stereotypes) about his/her professional identity, inducing the formation and salience of subgroups, and disrupts inter-subgroup relations [ 2 , 14 , 16 ]. It also reduces the motivation and ability of individuals to communicate or share information [ 17 , 18 ] and results in poor quality of care.…”