Coexisting Values in Healthcare and the Leadership Practices That Were Found to Inspire Followership Among Healthcare Practitioners

Abstract

Healthcare delivery in the United States has a storied history that has led the American public to expect that their Health Care Practitioners (HCPs) will personally and professionally enact values such as altruism, benevolence, equality, and capability. A progressive set of events that involves the implementation of the market-based solution in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has led healthcare organizations to become increasingly concerned with a conceptually different set of values. It has become more necessary for healthcare organizations to dedicate attention to market values (e.g., competition; productivity) as they operate in an environment that is commonly described as a $3.3T industry. There is significant concern that important care values are being sacrificed as the U.S. health system becomes increasingly commercialized. It is also believed that HCPs are experiencing increasing levels of demoralization and burnout as a result of their inability to realize their personal and professional care value preferences. A qualitative investigation into the experiences of a selection of HCPs served to reveal how the administration in a large health system fosters compatibility among personal, professional, and market value priorities via an application of the tenets of values-based leadership.Study outcomes also feature implications for both the servant leadership and transformational leadership constructs.