Importance of inclusive leadership in the pandemic response: the critical role of the physician.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in multiple logistical and communication challenges in the face of ever-changing guidance, disease prevalence and increasing evidence.At Stanford Children's Health (SCH), we felt physician input was an important element of pandemic response infrastructure, given our lens into patient care across its continuum. We formed the COVID-19 Physician Liaison Team (CPLT) consisting of representative physicians across the care continuum. The CPLT met regularly and communicated to the SCH's COVID-19 task force responsible for the ongoing organisation pandemic response. The CPLT problem-solved around various issues including testing, patient care on our COVID-19 inpatient unit and communication gaps.The CPLT contributed to conservation of rapid COVID-19 tests for critical patient care needs, decreased incident reports on our COVID-19 inpatient unit and helped enhance communication across the organisation, with a focus on physicians.In retrospect, the approach taken was in line with a distributed leadership model with physicians as integral members contributing to active lines of communication, continual problem-solving and new pathways to provide care.

View details for DOI 10.1136/leader-2022-000605

View details for PubMedID 37192092