Palliative Care Leadership

Abstract

Palliative care is one of the newer health specialties and continues to mature. While there has been remarkable progression of clinical skills and education, there has been a lack of focus on palliative care interdisciplinary leadership or development of leadership skills. This article highlights the importance of interdisciplinary palliative leadership within the 5 realms of clinical practice, research, education, policy/advocacy, and administration. A definition of leadership is offered and discussion of successful leadership skills is described. A current review of leadership opportunities is provided.

Leadership in specialist palliative home care teams: A qualitative study

“…Moving beyond managing to leading a palliative care team is suggested to empower team members to in turn improve care for patients in palliative care (Dahlin et al, ). Leadership in general is highlighted as crucial within health care due to diverging purposes and goals of various stakeholders in a complex environment (Trastek, Hamilton, & Niles, ).…”

“…For effective teamwork in specialist palliative care, leadership is crucial (Dahlin, Coyne, Goldberg, & Vaughan, ); however, defining and agreeing on what leadership comprises may be challenging. One reason for the focus on teamwork in palliative care is the potential for effectively combining diverse skills and perspectives to better meet the complex needs of patients and families facing life‐threatening illness and death (Ciemins, Brant, Kersten, Mullette, & Dickerson, ; Johansen & Ervik, ; Wagner, ).…”

“…Yukl () distinguishes between formal and informal leadership roles, where formal leaders are officially appointed as such, while informal leaders emerge as persons worth asking advice and listening to that other members in the organisation turn to. Emphasizing vision, empowerment and serving others are suggested as aligned with leadership, while control, using authority and executing plans, is presented as management (Dahlin et al, ). In differentiating leadership from management, building relationships and sharing responsibility have been suggested as paramount to interprofessional leadership (Dahlin et al, ; Johansson, Andersson, Gustafsson, & Sandahl, ), while management may be regarded as more associated with traditional models and hierarchical organisations.…”

“…Emphasizing vision, empowerment and serving others are suggested as aligned with leadership, while control, using authority and executing plans, is presented as management (Dahlin et al, ). In differentiating leadership from management, building relationships and sharing responsibility have been suggested as paramount to interprofessional leadership (Dahlin et al, ; Johansson, Andersson, Gustafsson, & Sandahl, ), while management may be regarded as more associated with traditional models and hierarchical organisations. The subtle shift from doing managerial tasks to being a leader (Johansson et al, ), building relationships in health care organisations, comprises a view of leadership used in this study.…”

End‐of‐life: An urgent update in nursing terminology

“…Palliative care is one of the newer health specialties and continues to mature. There has been remarkable progress in the relevant clinical skills and education (Dahlin et al, 2019), but the vast majority of health professionals worldwide have little or no knowledge of the principles and practices of palliative care (Connor, 2020).…”