Leadership skills spell success for OR business managers

Editor's Note

Social and leadership skills that enable OR business managers to communicate with staff at varying levels of the OR hierarchy are increasingly important. For that reason, several sessions at the OR Business Management Conference addressed ways to bridge communication gaps.

On Monday, January 28, leaders from the Cleveland Clinic discussed how they improved teamwork by creating a new structure in their session, “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work.” By adding administrators, finance, and analyst professionals to their core team of clinicians, they broke down silos and made team members more accessible and accountable to one another.

Business managers can be intimidated when they’re surrounded by clinicians, but understanding different social styles can go a long way toward establishing more comfortable working relationships, according to Edwin Ibay, JD, MHA, from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Ibay shared his pearls during “Relationship Mastery for the Healthcare Professional” on Tuesday, January 29.

Also on Tuesday, in an interesting twist on communication conundrums, Paul Rhodes, RN, and Blake Stock, MBA, explored how basic terminology differences between nursing leaders and budget office staff can impede efforts to achieve proper staffing levels. They used this example as a starting point for determining how to staff a perioperative services department in their session, “Bridging FTE & Staffing: A Rosetta Stone for Nurses and Budget Offices.”