A true leader emerges during crisis times. Their judgment, decision-making, and actions are crucial for an organization, especially when it goes through a challenging period. For healthcare leaders, the pandemic was our generation’s most extensive global test. The spread of COVID-19 worldwide exposed the causes of supply disruptions for system-critical medical products and pharmaceuticals. It revealed the consequences of fundamental leadership deficits in hospital personnel management, professional profiles and ethics, professional policies, and procurement management. Now, healthcare organizations looking at new ways to advance leadership positions that were historically based on the candidate’s academic or clinical accomplishments with no regard to their other competencies, including finance, team building, communication, and emotional intelligence.
An online, probability-based Gallup Panel survey conducted in the initial stages of the COVID-19 spread found that only 54% of healthcare employees feel well prepared to do their job. It said, even fewer (37%) feel very confident they’ll be able to successfully do their job if the outbreak continues. Unfortunately, only 44% of healthcare workers strongly agree their organization cares about their overall wellbeing, according to Gallup’s Panel data. However, there were heroic healthcare leaders around the world, who have identified and removed barriers to wellbeing by maintaining ongoing dialogue and reaffirming their commitment to their employees. Therefore, we can say that the healthcare industry’s post-pandemic leadership needs more agile, data-driven decision-making and empathy.
In this issue, we celebrate the success of healthcare leaders around the world by identifying the 10 Most Influential Healthcare Leaders to Watch in 2022. On the cover, we feature Elena Ratner, M.D., MBA, Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Ratner has dedicated her career to researching chemotherapy, cancer resistance, and drug development. She strongly believes the future of cancer care is not necessarily cancer cure or even early detection of cancer but cancer prevention.
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