The soft skills of hospital managers in Poland and integrated health care

Abstract

Introduction: One of the key determinants of the implementation of integrated health care are the soft skills of medical professionals associated with teamwork, interpersonal communication and motivating. Skills deficits in these areas may make it difficult to obtain expected results related to integrated care, despite considerable expenditures and efforts in other key areas, such as financing rules improvement, formal and legal changes, organizational streamlining etc. Development in the field of soft skills is among the most difficult not only when it comes to their implementation, but also in the matter of measuring expected results. Research problem and work tasks: The research problem was to determine the level of three selected soft competences in the group of managers of Polish hospitals and to compare outcomes with results obtained in the analogous research in the group of managers of the industrial sector. During the project the following tasks were undertaken: 1- Developing a set of descriptions regarding 30 behaviors related to the3 selected skills: a. Interpersonal communication b. Team management c. Motivating 2. Adaptation of the research method and tools to the needs of the project 3. Selecting a representative group 4. Developing results and comparing them with data on other sectors Methodology:  The project used quantitative research methods - a set of 30 descriptions of behaviors relating to the skills tested were developed. Data from 30 hospitals was obtained. The 180 degree assessment method was used (managers' self-assessment and managers' assessment by direct subordinates). The participants completed questionnaires available on the internet. The surveys were anonymous. In order to ensure confidentiality, a special system of assigning logins was used. In total 8,500 questionnaires regarding the assessment of 1,000 managers were obtained. Results: The results of self-assessment of hospital managers differ in each of the examined skills in favor of the results of the assessment obtained by employees to a greater degree than is the case of other industries. The biggest differences concern skills related to motivating. Differences are the smallest in the group of administrative managers and the largest in the medical professionals. Summary: Soft skills in the group of health care managers are of key importance for the implementation of teamwork and good communication conditioning the efficient course of the integrated healthcare process and reducing the problems arising from the fragmentation of care.  Due to the time-consuming process of changes in the mental area, activities related to the development of soft skills should accompany all other systemic changes leading to the implementation of integrated care and be systematically carried out with great intensity.