Background: Human resources play a critical role in encouraging efficient performance within organisations, especially for public healthcare organisations, where competences of staff are key aspects of the quality of services provided. In this context, the enhancement of competences are strategic objectives for Human Resources Management (HRM) in order to achieve excellent and lasting results. However, competences of healthcare professionals are both clinical and managerial. This study identifies specific managerial competences perceived as crucial by healthcare professionals in order to improve their performance and develop suitable HRM practices. Methods: The research methodology was divided into three main phases using mixed methods, commencing with literature review to identify the initial framework about managerial competences. Focus groups were then used to discuss evidence from the literature. Feedback from focus groups was used to draft the final questionnaire. Finally, the answers to the questionnaire were analysed through statistical software. Results: The results show that managers and professionals share a view of what specific managerial competences for healthcare organisations should be. Main competences are: quality evaluation based on outcomes; enhancement of professional competences; programming based on process management; project cost assessment; informal communication style; and participatory leadership. Conclusions: Although the issue of managerial skills in healthcare is widely discussed in literature, findings are often fragmentary. Our work includes a systematic literature review useful for more empirical studies. Furthermore, our results can support public managers who want to set up positive HRM practices for healthcare professionals.
Globalization has boosted the development of new pathogens as well as their capacity to cross national borders and threaten citizens’ health. It should therefore have been no surprise that the infection caused by COVID-19 spread so quickly from the metropolitan city of Wuhan, China, to the whole world. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic represents the biggest health crisis for many countries since the postwar period. The aggressiveness of the virus quickly led many countries to bring in strict containment measures to limit the spread of the disease and particularly to reduce pressure on hospitals. Pandemics affect the health care community in different ways, but all involve a bigger flow of patients into the system, compromising the proper functioning of hospitals. Italy was the first Western country to be heavily affected by the virus. This article describes how Italian health care organizations are facing the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey administered to health management experts highlights the main problems and possible ways for health care organizations to cope with the health crisis more effectively. Results highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic had a dramatic impact on health care organizations, forcing all hospitals to modify structures and processes to guarantee an efficacious response to new patient care needs. The lack of specialized resources, appropriate coordination tools, and clear plans for emergency management were the main problems faced by hospitals. Italy’s experience could be useful to countries facing the crisis today, or those which will face it in the near future.
Background: Human resources play a critical role in encouraging efficient performance within organisations, especially for public healthcare organisations, where competences of staff are key aspects of the quality of services provided. In this context, the enhancement of competences are strategic objectives for Human Resources Management (HRM) in order to achieve excellent and lasting results. However, competences of healthcare professionals are both clinical and managerial. This study identifies specific managerial competences perceived as crucial by healthcare professionals in order to improve their performance and develop suitable HRM practices.
Methods: The research methodology was divided into three main phases using mixed methods, commencing with literature review to identify the initial framework about managerial competences. Focus groups were then used to discuss evidence from the literature. Feedback from focus groups was used to draft the final questionnaire. Finally, the answers to the questionnaire were analysed through statistical software.
Results: The results show that managers and professionals share a view of what specific managerial competences for healthcare organisations should be. Main competences are: quality evaluation based on outcomes; enhancement of professional competences; programming based on process management; project cost assessment; informal communication style; and participatory leadership.
Conclusions: Although the issue of managerial skills in healthcare is widely discussed in literature, findings are often fragmentary. Our work includes a systematic literature review useful for more empirical studies. Furthermore, our results can support public managers who want to set up positive HRM practices for healthcare professionals.
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