Systems are composed of parts that perform different roles to achieve the ultimate goal. Healthcare includes parts doing different functions to ensure that communities achieve optimal well-being and respond appropriately to disasters and emergencies that influence people’s health. Therefore, it includes diverse professionals who also interact in various parts to serve communities and patients’ needs. Interprofessional collaboration ensures that the employees from different disciplines contribute their knowledge and skills to improve the outcomes. Members of the teams must understand the complexity of healthcare knowledge workers like physicians, nurses, and pharmacists and be equipped with the appropriate skills to motivate each other to promote a culture of safety.
Healthcare Knowledge Workers Complexity and Education
Healthcare knowledge workers are highly educated because they have to undergo rigorous training to be recruited into their various positions and roles. For instance, physicians must complete pre-medical and medical education before passing exams to be licensed to serve and be called doctors. They must be knowledgeable in chemistry, biology, and mathematics (Erschens et al., 2021). Candidates must also be educated about anatomy and physiology and understand how people’s bodies work. To be a nurse, it is mandatory to complete the relevant higher education degrees, do exams, and be licensed to serve. Masters and doctorates help people become advanced practitioners. For them to prescribe, they must have taken relevant courses and be licensed. The other employees that work for healthcare, like pharmacists, also undergo serious training to enter healthcare systems. The diverse skills and knowledge that the different knowledge works on help them in decisions to enable healthcare. For instance, physicians use their medical training to guide treatments and educate people. Nurses, too, use their information to educate and guide their behaviors.
Regarding complexity, knowledge workers are usually trained in different areas that fit the information they need to practice. For instance, healthcare teams need professionals from various fields that may differ depending on what the patients suffer from. For instance, when dealing with cancer, teams should have oncologists alongside other staff like nurses and pharmacists (Straub et al., 2020). However, when dealing with mental health, teams may have psychiatrists, nurses, and therapists. Each member should understand what the others do and their importance in their teams. They must also get help and help the other professionals (Straub et al., 2020). For instance, while the oncologists may assess and prescribe medication, nurses must also know what to look for and administer the medications as required by oncologists. Interprofessional teams ensure that care is holistic.
Dynamics that May Cause Success and Failures
The diversity in teams may encourage conflicts. Different preparations and functions among the team members offering care results in their perspectives differing. It may also cause their priorities to differ. Hence, professionals may frequently disagree on the steps to take. For instance, a highly educated nurse may differ from a physician in their roles (Zajac et al., 2021). Nurse practitioners are trained in many primary care roles. They diagnose, plan care, and may also prescribe medications depending on their state. Pharmacies also have the same roles and more. Therefore, if they conflict about something like a diagnosis, they may not work effectively together. Also, team members may fail to know each other’s roles. Hence, they may disagree because of role assignment and cause patient suffering. The workforce is also affected by cultural diversity. Employees encounter different beliefs and behaviors. They must ensure that patients’ rights and preferences are prioritized despite not agreeing with them. They must also respect each other’s views. Failing to understand and respect each other may render teams dysfunctional.
The lack of knowledge may cause people to feel disrespected in their teams and cause failures. Usually, when physicians work with nurses, they tell nurses what to do to enable their prescriptions. They must also tell therapists what to do and ensure that they assign assistants appropriate roles for their education levels and jobs (Zajac et al., 2021). However, when they assign wrong roles, the other professionals may fail to cooperate. For instance, assigning a nurse to a nurse assistant’s role may cause poor collaboration.
How Leaders Successfully Motivate the Workforce
Leaders in healthcare must motivate people to enable the system to meet its goals. Leaders apply different theories to motivate people. One of them is the Maslow’s theory. When applied in healthcare, it involves motivating professionals to work by caring for their various levels of needs (Liu et al., 2022). for instance, leaders must ensure that professionals access needs like rest and nutrition while at work. Hence, they must employ enough staff to cover all work and enable rest. For instance, the number of physicians and nurses must be enough to cover all patients’ needs and enable them to have enough balance. They must also provide resources like employment safety (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). Chief nurse officers sit in executive-level meetings and advocate for their followers to ensure that there are enough resources and that their jobs will be safe. However, when people think they will be fired easily, they will focus on looking for more secure jobs. Leaders must also recognize teams’ contributions. For instance, the leaders of the interprofessional teams must know how each individual contributed and recognize them to motivate them. Providing for professional’s needs facilitates their success and encourages loyalty to their organization. For instance, offering technologies like user-friendly electronic records and accessibility to resources for evidence-based care enables knowledge workers to access the data they need to accomplish their goals (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). For instance, decision support systems help physicians and nurses make patient-centered decisions.
Also, even though the workforce is needed to focus on patients’ needs, leaders must recognize the need for incentives. Transactional leadership requires that people be compensated for their work. Hence, leaders advocate for adequate payment (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). They understand that people work because they also have needs that should be fulfilled. They see the transactional nature of employees’ motivation to work. Hence, they pay enough and provide other incentives that encourage people to work better (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). For instance, when nurses work as expected, they expect payments. However, when they breach their ethics, they expect punishment like firing. Leaders who appropriately incentivize employees encourage more productivity. The incentive must be relative to people’s behaviors. For instance, there must be various levels of recognition depending on people’s roles. The levels of qualifications must be relative to the pay and roles. For instance, they should allow nurse practitioners to apply their knowledge fully and offer higher pay than nurses with lower qualifications to encourage their participation.
Effective communication enables interdisciplinary collaboration, safety, and shared vision. Leaders in diverse teams should understand the challenges that may occur (Zajac et al., 2021). They must expect conflicts and be prepared to respond. For instance, nurses and their assistants may disagree about their roles. Leaders must be equipped to solve and prevent such issues. Effective communication should include the appropriate frequency and resources. Knowledge workers must have quick access to information through available means (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). For instance, electronic records involve members updating their findings and making the records more informative. The behavior enables other team members to get the needed information quickly. Pharmacists and nurses should know the prescriptions and any other drugs that they may be taking to support their work. Such communication may improve treatments while also avoiding safety issues. Failure to update systems or the lack of such an effective system may cause people to be promoted to underinformed decisions (Zajac et al., 2021). For instance, prescribing without knowing if one is taking other medications that can counteract a treatment may cause diseases to escalate and cause patient safety concerns. Leaders should, therefore, communicate with team members and also enable team members to communicate peer-to-peer.
Leaders must remind staff of their vision. Transformational leadership requires that leaders be visionary. Hence, they must communicate the objectives and lead in seeking them (Mekonnen & Bayissa, 2023). For instance, departmental leaders should communicate the different department’s goals and how they will be achieved using vision boards and other available tools. They must understand people’s strengths and base their assignments on them. They must also be ethical and remind followers about the need for ethics and how it benefits both them and their patients.
Conclusion
Healthcare leaders must be knowledgeable about how complex and highly educated their staff are. They must recognize the implications of the characteristics to their leadership positions. Using appropriate leadership skills and theories enables optimal healthcare leadership. They should provide employee needs like information and resources to enable their decision-making and implementation of their roles. Communication should also be efficient for timely information sharing. People must also recognize each other’s roles and respect them. Efficient communication helps resolve conflicts and enables access to information resources that knowledge workers need. Leaders must, therefore, ensure that there is enough technology and knowledge among their interdisciplinary teams to enable service delivery.
References
Erschens, R., Herrmann-Werner, A., Schaffland, T. F., Kelava, A., Ambiel, D., Zipfel, S., & Loda, T. (2021). Association of professional pre-qualifications, study success in medical school and the eligibility for becoming a physician: A scoping review. Plos one, 16(11), e0258941.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258941
Liu, Z., Xiang, J., Luo, F., Hu, X., & Luo, P. (2022). The Study of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory in the Doctor-Nurse Integration Teaching Method on Clinical Interns. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 2022.https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/6388068
Mekonnen, M., & Bayissa, Z. (2023). The Effect of Transformational and Transactional Leadership Styles on Organizational Readiness for Change Among Health Professionals. SAGE Open Nursing, 9, 23779608231185923.https://doi.org/10.1177/23779608231185923
Straub, C., Heinzmann, A., Krueger, M., & Bode, S. F. (2020). Nursing staff’s and physicians’ acquisition of competencies and attitudes to interprofessional education and interprofessional collaboration in pediatrics. BMC Medical Education, 20(1), 1-8.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02128-y
Zajac, S., Woods, A., Tannenbaum, S., Salas, E., & Holladay, C. L. (2021). Overcoming challenges to teamwork in healthcare: a team effectiveness framework and evidence-based guidance. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 606445.https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.606445
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