Leadership and management competencies in occupational health: scoping review of the scientific and grey literature.

Background: There is a need to develop a leadership and management competency framework for future occupational health (OH) leaders. This scoping review was conducted to establish what the current evidence base is and to inform further research in this area.

Aims: To characterize the evidence base for leadership and management competencies relevant to OH professionals.

Methods: A scoping review was conducted via PubMed using search terms, inclusion criteria and search limits. A search of the online grey literature was conducted using Google search engine with the keyword search terms: leadership, management, competency, frameworks, occupational health, healthcare.

Results: The scientific literature identified nine relevant publications, one of which exclusively examined leadership within OH practice. It described the self-determining leadership needs of Occupational Health Physicians. The other eight publications described a strong consensus that leadership and management competencies are considered valuable or important, albeit in the wider context of core competencies required for clinicians working in the OH profession. In this context, leadership and management competencies were ranked less important than other core competencies for OH professional practice. A review of the Grey literature did not identify any additional publications.

Conclusions: There is a paucity of OH-specific evidence on which to develop a leadership and management competency framework in the OH professional group. Further mixed-method research is required to identify all relevant cross-sector OH leadership and management competencies. This will inform the development of a consensus for a unified framework in the OH profession.