WK 9 Assignment -Healthcare Administrator Role

Examples of leadership challenges one would face as the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in assuring the system changes implemented will help significantly to mitigate, if not prevent, the next Ebola outbreak would be communication and information/data management. To explicate, the CDC must partner and work with various, multidisciplinary organizations to coordinate public health education (including medical personnel), surveillance and reporting of suspected and/or active Ebola cases, and response teams in containing and preventing the spread of the disease. In the example of the Ebola case in Sierra Leone, researchers found several challenges the investigators encountered when conducting Ebola virus disease (EVD) investigations and they included the following: transportation, communication, data quality and management, personal safety and fatigue, and community trust (Boland, Polich, Connolly, Hoar, Sesay, & Tran, 2017). With numerous factors at play in preventing infectious disease outbreaks, the CDC director must be able to communicate effectively and utilize robust influential skills to mobilize and sync the efforts of multidisciplinary teams.

The barriers that the CDC director face are no different than the leader in a different role and/or organization. The common denominator that all of these leaders have is that they all need to collaborate and work with others, whether in the form of vertical and/or horizontal leadership. To clarify, leaders must exercise versatility in being able to lead through influence and coaching by appreciating the work that all stakeholders in every level contribute to in solving systems, if not global, issues as it pertains to infectious disease outbreaks. As Robinson (2016) supported, leaders need to shift their paradigm by moving “beyond one set of leadership behaviors to increase flexibility in dealing with complex situations.” All in all, leadership challenges do not confine itself to a particular discipline.

Reference

Boland, S. T., Polich, E., Connolly, A., Hoar, A., Sesay, T., & Tran, A. A. (2017). Overcoming

operational challenges to ebola case investigation in sierra leone. Global Health,

Science and Practice, 5(3), 456-467. https://doi- org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.9745/GHSP-D-17-00126

Robinson, J. L. (2016). Connecting leadership and learning: Do versatile learners make

connective leaders? Higher Learning Research Communications, 6(1). Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost- com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1132945&site=eds -live&scope=site