Unique qualities define successful healthcare leaders

#UsToo: implicit bias, meritocracy and the plight of black minority leaders in healthcare

In the fall of 2017, the #MeToo movement ushered in one of the most astonishing revolts against the perils of workplace-related harassment. Several unsuccessful campaigns geared towards ending the harassment and subjugation of women in corporate organisations finally got a thrust that resulted in significant and far-reaching changes in many organisations. While the #MeToo movement highlighted the pains and struggles of gender inequality over the years, an unintended consequence has been the shadow it has cast over the plight of other minority groups facing harassment in the workplace. In several academic and healthcare (learning) environments, people of colour, like women, face explicit and implicit forms of harassment on a regular, if not daily basis. Unlike gender harassment, however, racial harassment affects both sexes with relatively more predominance among men. The effect of racial harassments does not just impact performance and self-confidence but also influences the opportunities available to black professionals to advance their academic and professional careers. In the academic and healthcare industries, the issue of how to tackle implicit bias and unfair practices is not clear-cut. While the subjugated feel the impact of bias, the perpetrators of the actions either lack the ability (or are unwilling) to acknowledge these biases. Furthermore, the complexities inherent to the different contexts make it problematic if not impossible, to call out racist behaviours. In this paper, a real-life case scenario is used to provide a scholarly analysis of the dynamics of racial harassment, implicit bias and the impact on minority leader roles in healthcare delivery.

Physical Therapists' Perceptions of Leadership across the Health Care Continuum: A Brief Report

PURPOSE

To describe and compare Canadian physical therapists' perspectives on the importance of characteristics required for leadership in the workplace and in society and to explore the implications for the profession.

METHODS

This quantitative, cross-sectional study used a web-based survey of members of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) with a registered email address (n=6156). The perceived importance of leadership characteristics at the workplace level versus the societal level was examined using a Mann-Whitney U test, with the significance set at α=0.05.

RESULTS

A total of 1,511 respondents completed the questionnaire for a 24.5% response rate; they rated communication, professionalism, and credibility as the most important characteristics. For each of the 15 leadership characteristics, significantly fewer physical therapists chose the rating "extremely important" at the societal level than did so at the workplace level (p<0.001 for all characteristics).

CONCLUSIONS

Physical therapists consistently rate leadership characteristics as more important in the workplace than at the societal level. Future research should aim to guide understanding about the reasons for this difference in perceived importance of leadership characteristics across different contexts.