Hybridity enabled: A research synthesis of the enabling conditions for hybrid professionalism in healthcare

Hybrid professionals in healthcare organizations play a critical role, the characteristics, processes and implications of which have been thoroughly studied by scholars in the field. However, not as much attention has been paid to the conditions under which such roles might be taken by professionals entering the ground of management. This gap results into a lack of conceptual clarity and eventually ends being an obstacle in framing and ameliorating the tools needed to act such a role in its different phases. This is a research area worthy of a finer-grained understanding: the ability of organizations to effectively support role hybridization, in fact, is a requisite for professionals-managers' willingness to stay in the role and cope with the complexity that such a two-fold position entails, no matter what. Based on the results of a scoping literature review, this paper presents the enabling conditions for hybrid professionalism in healthcare, and proposes a classification of them into categories corresponding to different facets of hybrid role-taking: opportunities for interaction with management, tools supporting sense-making, and provision of delegation and autonomy. For each of these categories, organizational and management tools discussed in the literature are presented. The results of the study provide a road-map of the enabling conditions for hybrid professionalism that aims to be of practical convenience for managers and policy-makers in health care. Eventually, suggestions for organizational design and personnel management, as well as directions for further research, are highlighted.

Assessment of a SARS-CoV-2 population-wide rapid antigen testing in Italy: a modeling and economic analysis study

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to compare the cost-effectiveness of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mass testing, carried out in November 2020 in the Italian Bolzano/Südtirol province, to scenarios without mass testing in terms of hospitalizations averted and quality-adjusted life-year (QALYs) saved.

METHODS

We applied branching processes to estimate the effective reproduction number (Rt) and model scenarios with and without mass testing, assuming Rt = 0.9 and Rt = 0.95. We applied a bottom-up approach to estimate the costs of mass testing, with a mixture of bottom-up and top-down methodologies to estimate hospitalizations averted and incremental costs in case of non-intervention. Lastly, we estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), denoted by screening and related social costs, and hospitalization costs averted per outcome derived, hospitalizations averted and QALYs saved.

RESULTS

The ICERs per QALY were €24 249 under Rt = 0.9 and €4604 under Rt = 0.95, considering the official and estimated data on disease spread. The cost-effectiveness acceptability curves show that for the Rt = 0.9 scenario, at the maximum threshold willingness to pay the value of €40 000, mass testing has an 80% probability of being cost-effective compared to no mass testing. Under the worst scenario (Rt = 0.95), at the willingness to pay threshold, mass testing has an almost 100% probability of being cost-effective.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide evidence on the cost-effectiveness and potential impact of mass COVID-19 testing on a local healthcare system and community. Although the intervention is shown to be cost-effective, we believe the initiative should be carried out when there is initial rapid local disease transmission with a high Rt, as shown in our model.

Dealing with pluralism: the managerial work of CEOs in Italian public healthcare organizations

Background

Healthcare organizations are extremely complex. The work of their CEOs is particularly demanding, especially in the public sector, though little is known about how the managerial work of a healthcare organization CEO unfolds. Drawing from scholarship on managerial work and management in pluralistic organizations, we sought to answer the questions: What is the content of managerial work of CEOs in public healthcare in Italy? How do healthcare CEOs perform their managerial work in complex interactions with multiple stakeholders?

Methods

For this study we adopted a multi-method approach in which we conducted a survey to investigate CEO behaviors, tracked CEO working time for 4 weeks, and conducted semi-structured interviews with senior CEOs.

Results

CEOs in public healthcare devote most of their time to interaction, which half of which is perceived as being occupied with apparently mundane problems. Nonetheless, devoting time to such activities is functional to a CEO’s goals because change in pluralistic contexts can be achieved only if the CEO can handle the organization’s complexity. CEOs do this by engaging in routines and conversations with professionals, creating consensus, and establishing networks with external stakeholders.

Conclusions

CEOs are called to reduce fragmentation and foster cooperation across disciplines and professional groups, with the overarching aim to achieve integrated care. Using an analytical approach we were able to take into account the context and the relational dimension of the managerial work of healthcare CEOs and the specificities of this role.

Trial registration

This article does not report the results of a healthcare intervention on human participants, and the material used in the research did not require ethical approval according to Italian law.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08567-1.

Involving clinicians in management: assessing views of doctors and nurses on hybrid professionalism in clinical directorates

BACKGROUND

Hybrid professionalism is one of the most effective ways to involve clinicians in management practices and responsibilities. With this study we investigated the perceptions of doctors and nurses on hybridization in clinical directorates (CDs) in hospitals.

METHODS

We investigated the attitudes of healthcare professionals (doctors and nurses) towards eight hospital CDs in the Local Health Authority (LHA) of Bologna (Emilia Romagna, Italy) 6 years after their implementation. We used a validated questionnaire by Braithwaite and Westbrook (2004). Drawing on Palmer et al. (2007), we added a section about the characteristics of department heads. In all, 123 healthcare professionals in managerial roles completed and returned the questionnaire. The return rate was 47.4% for doctors and 31.6% for nurses.

RESULTS

Doctors reported an increase in clinical governance, interdisciplinarity collaboration, and standardization of clinical work. Hybridization of practices was noted to have taken place. While doctors did not see these changes as a threat to professional values, they felt that hospital managers had taken greater control. There was a large overlap of attitudes between doctors and nurses: inter-professional integration in CDs fostered alignment of values and aims. The polarity index was higher for responses from the doctors than from the nurses.

CONCLUSION

The study findings have implications for policy makers and managers: mission and strategic mandate of CDs; governance of CDs, leadership issues; opportunities for engaging healthcare professionals; changes in managerial involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also discuss the limitations of the present study and future areas for research into hybrid structures.

Beyond hybrid professionals: evidence from the hospital sector

Background

The involvement of doctors in managerial roles seems to be the solution to reducing the friction between traditional professionalism and modern organizational paradigms. However, these “hybrid” professionals responded in different ways to these conflicting demands, and we need to better understand the contextual factors that explain such variation.

Methods

The paper studies hybrid professionals in a hospital characterized by numerous organizational changes. The site is located in Italy, a country in which healthcare organizations have been exposed to managerial reforms for years but where the degree to which professionals embraced management varies. A longitudinal case study was performed that involved gathering data through multiple sources of evidence to understand the complex organizational dynamics that take place in the hospital.

Results

The analysis shows that the taking up of hybrid managerial roles is enabled by a number of interrelated features of the social/organizational context. Professionals willing to become hybrids were favored by the support provided by the organization. While for those doctors initially more reluctant towards medical management, distinctive contextual factors, in particular, the presence of space for interaction with colleagues within the professional domains but beyond disciplinary boundaries, was of key importance. This second group also proved capable of interiorizing organizational values and practices in a reconfigured way.

Conclusions

In order to understand hybridization, it is necessary to look beyond hybrids at the context surrounding them. This study provides evidence for scholars and practitioners willing to understand how medical management is evolving and how this transition can be supported, and it contributes to the literature on hybrid managers by showing how contexts facilitating social interactions enable professionals’ hybridization.

Trial registration

The article does not report the results of a health care intervention on human participants, and material used in the research did not need ethical approval according to Italian law.

An international perspective on medical leadership

Medical leadership is a global policy priority worldwide as it aims at answering some of the greatest challenges of healthcare, including changing patient needs, budget cuts, increasing citizen demand for accountability and rising service expectations. However, the introduction of doctors in management roles is not easy, and the actual practice of medical management greatly varies across countries and within each country. In order to favour its development, policymakers and executives should have the courage to give autonomy to medical managers and to support them, and should acknowledge the specificities of such hybrid roles when selecting, training and appraising future medical leaders. At the same time, professionals and their associations should understand that clinical leadership is not about dismantling professionalism, but rather about reconfiguring it, incorporating new values and logics into the traditional medical culture.

The interpretation of symptoms of starvation/severe dietary restraint in eating disorder patients

The aims of the study were to test the hypotheses that some symptoms of starvation/severe dietary restraint are interpreted by patients with eating disorders in terms of control. Sixty-nine women satisfying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV edition (DSM-IV) criteria for a clinical eating disorder and 107 controls participated in the study. All the participants completed an ambiguous scenarios paradigm, the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Significantly more eating disorder patients than non clinical participants interpreted the starvation/dietary restraint symptoms of hunger, heightened satiety, and dizziness in terms of control. The data give further support to the recent cognitive-behavioural theory of eating disorders suggesting that eating disorder patients interpret some starvation/dietary restraint symptoms in terms of control.