Managing the Mental Health of Healthcare Professionals in Times of Crisis: The Aruban COVID-19 Experience

The Inflow, Throughput and Outflow of COVID-19 Patients in Dutch Hospitals: Experiences from Experts and Middle Managers

At the beginning of 2020, the large and unforeseen inflow of COVID-19 patients had a deep impact on the healthcare operations of Dutch hospitals. From a patient flow logistics perspective, each hospital handled the situation largely in its own particular and improvised way. Nevertheless, some hospitals appeared to be more effective in their dealing with this sudden demand for extra care than others. This prompted a study into the factors which hindered and facilitated effective operations during this period. We provide an overview of actions and measures for organizing and managing the inflow, throughput and outflow of COVID-19 patients within Dutch hospitals from various types of departments in a large number of hospitals in The Netherlands, based on interviews with nine experts and twelve hospital managers. Ten actions or measures have been identified, which have been divided into the following three dimensions: Streamlining of the underlying in- and external processes, reducing unnecessary or undesirable inflow of patients and increasing or making more adequate use of the available (human) capacity. The main lessons learned are the importance of integral tuning in the care process, giving up habits and self-interest, good information provision and the middle manager as a linking pin.

Facing the Post-Pandemic Challenges: The Role of Leadership Effectiveness in Shaping the Affective Well-Being of Healthcare Providers Working in a Hybrid Work Mode

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to the medical industry, including hybrid work, in which specialists can perform some of their duties remotely, in addition to physical contact with patients and their teams. Hybrid work provides opportunities, but also generates difficulties (e.g., accurate long-distance diagnosis); therefore, there is a need to ensure the well-being of healthcare workers, especially in the context of leadership strategies. As there is little research on leadership practices in remote and hybrid medical worker management, this study analyses the relationship between certain behavioural strategies and competencies of leaders and the affective well-being of hybrid employees. The research was conducted among a group of employees (N = 135) from seven countries who provide healthcare in a hybrid model. The correlations between the variables showed the statistical significance of all leadership strategies introduced into the model and focused on building involvement (employee empowerment and team orientation), creating a shared vision, defining clear goals and strategies, promoting adaptability (change management, promotion of organisational learning and patient focus), managing consistency through shared values, agreement and effective coordination, as well as competencies such as communicativeness, credibility, self-development and digital readiness. Despite the significance of all the relationships, the linear regression showed that the variability of affective well-being was explained mainly by the adaptability leadership strategy. The results of the study expand the knowledge on the competencies of healthcare leaders, and shed new light on the management of medical employees performing remote and hybrid work. Because such research into well-being has not been published to date, the analysis begins an important discussion on redefining leadership in the healthcare sector, taking into account the digital transformation.