The ever-changing face of health care continues to require broader knowledge for caregivers. For nurses and other allied health professionals who want to move into management, understanding their professions and the mission of their organizations is more important than ever.

"The vast majority of clinical professionals, of course, focus on delivering care and being patient advocates," said Ken Pittman, FACHE, senior consultant for Resurgence Health Group, a company that manages hospitals across the Southeast. "The key to being able to move up the management ladder is to fully understand the hospital's mission, including the new demands of compliance and reimbursement."

Meeting bottom-line challenges while providing quality patient care requires leadership development.

"Every care provider needs to be trained in the collaborative team approach to reach goals and further the mission of their institutions," said Laurie Hair, CEO of Flint River Community Hospital in Montezuma. "Many professionals chose health care because it allows them to use their independent-thinking and clinical skills every day, and this is absolutely important in patient care.

"However, there's another dimension to health care that we, as employers, must provide: leadership development and the concept of teamwork."

Pittman is working with Flint River Community Hospital to institute a leadership development program for staff members.

"Training all levels of staff in collaborative teamwork accomplishes several goals: process improvement for more effective delivery of care; an understanding of the importance of each team member's role and value to the process; enhanced communications; and the increased awareness of the issues regarding reimbursement and compliance," Pittman said.

Leadership-development programs should involve all levels of staff, Pittman said. He recommends several tools for building stronger leadership, including opening lines of communication to address specific issues of health care delivery processes in group/team settings.

"Health care naturally attracts people who do well in a crisis, something that gets their adrenalin flowing," he said. "However, to help all of your staff be pro-active instead of reactive, it's incredibly beneficial to provide in-house training regarding all aspects of hospital management. That way, everyone is developing a different kind of thinking that can result in process improvement rather than reacting to each situation."

The demands of health care over the past decade have gone beyond the delivery of care and advanced diagnosis/treatment protocols to include the challenges of meeting business goals and external compliance requirements. Pittman said that the flow chart method of process evaluation can educate the clinical staff about the nuances of the business side of health care.

"Clinical professionals must continue to develop their competencies," he said. "It's also becoming more important that they understand the business issues organizations face and be able to integrate them into the delivery of care to be the best health care provider that they can be."