Managing healthcare services: Are professionals ready to play the role of manager?

Abstract

Health professionals are now required to develop skills that help them to achieve better organizational performance, in addition to the skills necessary to carry out their professional activities. The role of clinician-manager has thus grown rapidly in all the main industrialized countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate how healthcare professionals perceive their level of preparation in managerial skills. Analysing literature on managerial skills in the health sector, ten domains of skills emerged and were used to construct a questionnaire. A survey analysis was conducted among professionals from health organizations in two Italian regions. Independent t-tests were conducted and a one-way analysis of variance was performed in order to compare the self-assessment competency levels in selected subgroups of participants. Findings show that healthcare professionals feel sufficiently prepared in all managerial areas identified. However, they also suggest that health organizations should invest more in all managerial areas. Differences between self-perception of competence and need for training occur among managers and non-managers. The findings will be useful for top management and policy makers designing operational tools for intervention in human resource development, with the aim of providing appropriate training and skills for clinician-managers.

Framing doctor-managers’ resilience during Covid-19 pandemic: A descriptive analysis from the Italian NHS

“…26 For this reason they have demonstrated the need to possess a bundle of necessary competencies in terms of leadership, 37 but also the ability to combine the clinical competencies with the managerial ones with the aim to efficiently manage resources and achieve better organizational performance. 38 …”

The managerial role of healthcare professionals in public hospitals: a time-driven analysis of their activities

“…The need for a more “management-oriented” organisation of the healthcare sector is given by several endogenous factors which are not under the control of any individual organisation [ 8 , 9 ]. These includes cutbacks in resources, technological innovation requiring increasingly costly investments, rising demand for quality healthcare, and reforms in many OECD countries which have altered administration and financing of healthcare systems [ 10 ].…”

“…The United Kingdom, for example, following the Griffiths Report of the late 1980s, gave hospital doctors responsibilities for management alongside clinical duties [ 11 ]. Denmark did the same in the 1980s, moving to new organisational models based on the hybrid role of the clinician-manager [ 10 ]. Other countries like France and Spain took the same path in the 1990s and early 2000s [ 12 ].…”

“…Each follows different and often conflicting lines of logic [ 13 ]. Some authors suggest that clinicians can be efficient managers thanks to their professional role [ 10 ], but others disagree [ 14 ].…”

“…The reform reorganised the structure of public hospitals along lines of managerial accountability in a clear drive for financial, technical, and functional efficiency [ 22 ]. Among other things, the reform transformed the role of the clinician who assumed responsibility for the organizational unit, requiring him/her to become manager [ 10 ]. As matter of fact, the new chief of unit is still a clinician, who is also responsible for running and organising the structure, planning and scheduling projects, managing clinical outcomes, managing human resources, and overseeing financial, technical, and administrative targets [ 27 ].…”