Gender gap in healthcare leadership

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McDonagh, K.J., Bobrowski, P., Hoss, M.K., Paris, N., Schulte, M. (2014). The leadership gap: ensuring effective healthcare leadership requires inclusion of women at the top. Open Journal of Leadership, 3, 20-29. doi: 10.4236/ojl.2014.32003

This article points out some interesting points about women in leadership, and I thought it was relevant since our Internship program focuses on leadership, and the dietetics profession is primarily women.  The leadership focus as part of our Internship experience will help up in establishing informal leadership roles among our peers, which may lead to formal leadership roles in the organization.  Below is a brief abstract of the article. 

Not too long ago, health care was associated with disease and sickness, recently there has been a change in the thinking and the focus is now on wellness, prevention, primary care, and increased patient decision making.  This shift will require a different leadership model to provide higher quality care at lower prices.  Women leaders tend to be collaborative and transformational; styles that would support the changing health care community.  Studies have shown that diverse executive teams result in enhanced performance, however career development and succession planning for female leaders is not a priority for healthcare leadership.  There is a gap in the healthcare system, women are not in the top leadership roles, although they are qualified and well suited. 

Women make up the majority of students in medical schools and in graduate programs related to health careers.  Some of the reasons identified for the gender gap in healthcare are CEO’s work unreasonably long hours, potential leaders are unwilling to spend hours working at the expense of personal priorities, lack of financial resources for mentoring of future leaders, leadership development and succession planning is not a commitment of board of directors, and current leaders are not developing successors. 

Strategies such as CEO and board accountability, succession planning and leadership development were addressed in the article to increase gender diversity.  The idea of changing the corporate culture was also discussed by incorporating professional and personal goals into the workplace.  Ultimately, women have to take initiative to overcome the barriers to career advancement.

AW 

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