2. Management and
Leadership in Community Healthcare
When you have studied this session, you should be able to:
Define and use correctly all of the key words printed in bold.
Briefly describe the main principles of healthcare
management.
Explain the roles and levels of management in healthcare work
and why healthcare management is important for your work as
a Health Extension Practitioner.
Describe leadership concepts in community healthcare and
understand the differences between management and
3. What is management?
• Getting things done through people
• Management is the process of forecasting and planning,
organising, leading, coordinating and controlling the resources
of an organisation in the efficient and effective pursuit of a
specified organisational goal
Henri Fayol (1916)
4. cont
• Your key goal in community health management
is improving the health of your community.
• Reaching this goal requires an understanding of
the concepts of management and leadership.
5. Concepts of management
• Three of the most important concepts in healthcare
management are effectiveness, efficiency and equity
• Effectiveness:is a measure of how well an organisation, or a
person in an organisation, is meeting their goals.
• Example: A Health Extension Practitioner is set an objective
to distribute 500 malaria bed nets during one year and
succeeds in distributing 100. What do you think went
wrong?
6. Efficiency
• Efficiency is a measure of how well the health sector
is using its resources to achieve that goal.
• Efficiency involves doing things right, using
resources wisely and with a minimum of waste.
• Example:Health Post A has received an anti-malarial
drug with only one month shelf life remaining. It
expires after one month having served only a few
people. Is this an efficient use of resources?
7. Equity
• Access to healthcare is the basic right of all people.
However, this does not always happen in real life for
many reasons.
• Health inequalities are a result of the unfair
distribution of resources and may be associated with
low income levels, housing, education, gender,
geographically inaccessible areas and sometimes with
ethnicity.
9. Management functions
Planning:is forecasting and thinking about things that you
want to happen in the future and then working out ways to
get there.
Organizing: As part of the implementation process,
organising the various administrative structures and
community group members, is crucial.
Leading: is directing, influencing and motivating a team.
Coordination:It will help you to see whether the things that
you and your team are doing are consistent with your
overall plan.
Monitoring and control:Monitoring is the regular
observation and recording of activities. Controlling is
ensuring that work has been accomplished according to
plan.
10. Management roles and levels
• A health manager is someone who spends a substantial
proportion of their time managing areas of healthcare
provision such as:
coverage of services (planning, implementation and
evaluation)
resources (staff, budgets, drugs, equipment, buildings,
information)
external relations with partners, including service users.
11. Management levels
Top-level managers:Top-level managers are
often called senior management or executives.
Example: FMOH,ORHB
Top-level managers make decisions affecting
the entirety of the health sector.
They do not direct the day-to-day activities of
the sector;
they set goals for the health sector and direct
others to achieve them.
12. Middle-level managers
They are responsible for carrying out the goals set by top
management.
They also set goals at their level and perhaps for other units
they are responsible for.
They can motivate and assist frontline managers to achieve the
sector objectives.
They may also communicate upwards, by offering suggestions
and feedback to top managers.
13. Frontline managers
They are responsible for the daily management
of health activities in the community.
Example: Health Extension Practitioners
These are the managers that interact most with
the larger community on a daily basis.
15. Interpersonal roles
• Interpersonal roles require you to direct,
support and supervise your team and work
together with people from other agencies.
• It is categorised as the leader role, figurehead
role and liaison role
• leader role involves all the leadership and
motivational activities.
• A leader acts as an example for other team
members to follow.
16. cont
Figurehead role deals largely with ceremonial and
symbolic activities such as attending opening
ceremonies or taking a special part in community
celebrations
liaison role which includes those activities which you
as a Health Extension Practitioner need to undertake
in order to develop and maintain a network of
contacts inside and outside the community.
17. Informational roles
• Informational roles are those in which you
gather and then pass on information.
• Under the informational role you play a
monitor, disseminator and spokesperson role.
18. Decisional roles
• Decisional roles include the roles of: resources
allocator, negotiator, entrepreneur and
disturbance handler.
• The entrepreneur role is to seek and identify
opportunities to promote improvement and
needed change.
20. What is leadership?
• Leadership is concerned with influencing the
thoughts, attitudes and behaviours of other people.
• leaders need a combination of characteristics
including: intelligence, initiative, self confidence
and the ‘helicopter trait’, which is the ability to rise
above immediate events and try to work out longer
term or strategic ways forward.
22. Strategic function:
• To develop a sense of direction in the group or
community.
• You must provide a mission (what needs to be done)
and a strategy (a path for how to accomplish the
mission and a way for the group to get there).
• Developing a clear vision and a careful strategy is not
enough, you must also clearly communicate them to
your community.
23. Tactical function
• This involves identifying and choosing the
most appropriate means to persuade the group
or community.
24. Interpersonal function:
• It is important to maintain the morale,
cohesion and commitment of the group or
community.
25. What do you consider are the main differences between a
manager and a leader?
The main aim of a manager is to maximise the output of an
organisation through a formal, rational method.
The main aim of a leader is to motivate others to bring about
change.
Management deals with planning, budgeting, organising and
staffing, controlling and problem solving, in order to achieve
results.
Leadership is establishing direction, aligning people,
motivating and inspiring them in order to bring about change.
Focus on result:One of the principles of management is to make sure that everybody within
the organisation has a clear understanding of the goals and objectives and
makes each person aware of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving
those objectives.
