leadership competencies merged together (Kutz, 2008; Schafer, Lopopolo, &
Luedtke-Hoffman, 2007) rather than a separation of leadership or managerial skills
into independent categories (Comer et al., 2002).
David Pendleton (2012) argues that leadership needs in healthcare are not
unique to the leadership needs of any other group. Regardless, health professions
conduct their own research to identify the specific leadership and managerial skills
utilized within their specific settings (Fuller, 2012; Kutz, 2010b; Lopopolo, Shafer,
and Noose, 2004; Sanares, Waters, & Marshall, 2007). Profession-specific data
allows those professions to incorporate and specify leadership skills and outcomes
within educational program competencies (Drake, 2014; Kutz & Scialli, 2008) and
professional development initiatives (Alexander, Hearld, & Mittler, 2011).
The Importance of High-Quality Leadership in Healthcare
Recent research has indicated that high-quality leadership is correlated with
positive patient outcomes within medical professions such as the medicine, dentistry,
physical therapy, and nursing fields (Curry, Spatz, Cherlin, Thompson, Berg, Ting,
…Bradley, 2011; Haycock-Stuart & Kean, 2012; Squires, Tourangeau, Laschinger, &
Doran, 2010; Wong & Cummings, 2007). The role of good leadership has also been
shown to play a role in decreasing burnout, emotional exhaustion, and turnover rates
in nursing (Kooker & Kamikawa, 2010; Laschinger & Leiter, 2006; Wallis &
Kennedy, 2013). As those factors have an indirect link to and are correlated with
adverse effects in a hospital setting, effective organizational leadership may play a