Healthcare Leadership

This course provides current and future healthcare leaders with both the theory and practice of building effective teams and keep them running on all cylinders. Using common examples that exist in healthcare along with the experience of students, this course considers the role of the leader, alignment, communication, training and feedback in the development of effective teams. Students examine the conflicts that arise within teams and how best to address them and explore how to measure whether their team is functioning at a high level.

Healthcare is a dynamic workplace where professionals from different educational programs and experiences must work together to achieve outstanding results in patient care, clinical outcomes and quality measurement, all while under significant financial pressures. Inevitably, differences will arise that need to be addressed effectively while maintaining interdependent relationships. This course teaches students to follow the "Getting to Yes" and "Difficult Conversations" principles in application to health care specific situations.

This course builds on the prior three courses using a student-selected leadership project involving change. At each stage of the project, students incorporate their personal leadership approach, the culture of their group, and their comfort with finding common ground. Students explore each step of John P. Kotter's eight-step "Leading Change" process, applying related concepts to their project and to other health care-specific situations.

Professionals across most fields and disciplines, more specifically healthcare, are challenged to lead, work with and intervene in a variety of unusual situations. Therefore, health care professionals who develop the leadership skills to facilitate interdependent, cooperative action are needed. This course provides the opportunity for each healthcare leader to identify and advance her/his leadership approach.