Leading Professionally Diverse Workgroups of Healthcare Professionals for Improving Quality of Care

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to unfold the internal dynamics of a workgroup of healthcare professionals and to identify leadership behaviors that can enhance the benefits of professional diversity to improve the quality of care. The present study explores the recent literature on leadership, professional diversity within workgroups of healthcare professionals, and their performance outcomes especially the quality of care. The finding reveals that the sub-group categorization is salient diversity generated process in the profession-based workgroup of healthcare professionals and shared perception of inclusiveness of workgroup leader can reduce the saliency of sub-group categorization and facilitates the full contribution of group members by creating psychological safety climate and workgroup inclusion to enhance the quality of care they delivered. This paper identified the salient process of diversity within the workgroup of healthcare professionals and explores the role of a shared perception of inclusive leadership in enhancing the quality of care, thereby offering a novel framework for future inclusive leadership and quality of care research. Leaders can capitalize on the proposed model to utilize the benefits of the presence of professional diversity within a workgroup of healthcare professionals to improve the quality of care.