Researchers may have found ‘untapped potential’ for the strained healthcare system
Hospital staff are less likely to fall ill if they work in a department with a high degree of local and interdisciplinary leadership. At least, this is the finding of a new study from the University of Southern Denmark and the National Research Centre for the Working Environment.
Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense.
If you work in a hospital department where the immediate supervisor, together with the staff, has the opportunity to make a number of decisions independently and organize workflows tailored to their department, satisfaction increases. If the supervisor also oversees multiple professional groups, allowing for continuous coordination between, for example, nurses and doctors, the level of well-being is even higher.
And with higher well-being, sickness absence decreases.
But while intuition and assumptions are one thing, scientific results now back up this hypothesis.
Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and the National Research Centre for the Working Environment have recently published a study showing that the likelihood of sickness absence is lower in hospital departments with a high degree of decentralized and interdisciplinary management.
- It's important to remember that this is just a single study. But it seems there is untapped potential in the relationship between leadership and well-being in Danish hospitals, which we know are under pressure and short on staff, says Ann Dyreborg Larsen, senior researcher at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment.
- I'm sure hospitals are already aware of this, but our results could perhaps lead to increased focus on the issue.
Clear trend
The researchers examined the relationship between sickness absence and management in two specific hospitals.
A total of 300 so-called frontline managers—those closest to the staff on the ground—answered a questionnaire about the extent to which they could make decisions in their departments and whether they oversaw multiple professional groups. The answers were then linked to data on sickness absence for around 7,000 employees in the same departments.
Although not all results are statistically significant, they all point in the same direction. And when the researchers adjusted for all conceivable factors—such as the age, education, and experience of the managers—the trend remained clear:
The more decentralized and interdisciplinary the management, the less sickness absence
- There will always be uncertainties in statistics, but everything points to better solutions being found when decisions are made locally in the department, rather than from the top. This also aligns well with what modern management research has generally found, says Peter Hasle, professor of working environment at the University of Southern Denmark.
- Staff shortages in the healthcare system are a huge challenge for society, and this is a very concrete tool that all hospitals could use without significant costs. So I definitely think it's something we should act on.