Leadership ( case ) - Research Paper Example

Problems The radiology department at the medical center was understaffed and did not have any modern equipment to work with. Personnel from other departments including physicians and surgeons had various difficulties in coordinating their treatments with the radiologists as the latter were largely unavailable for consultations, especially at nights and during weekends. It also appears that the radiologists had developed the habit of leaving earlier than other staff, thus delaying the resolution of specific patient cases.

Apart from making no serious efforts towards modernizing the equipment, the radiologists were not interested in enhancing their qualifications and experience by training with modern equipment and procedures. Efforts by the chief of medical staff to recruit additional radiologists met with little response from the department, thus inhibiting their ability to adhere to the 24 hour turnaround standard. There had been several complaints over the behavior of the radiologists, who were even accused of treating their coworkers in a disrespectful manner.

Other than the CEO, the radiologists reported to the head of the radiology department and the president of the medical staff. . Despite being given a year to improve their position, the radiologists maintained that the new CEO would simply forget about the whole episode and made no efforts to improve in any manner. There are also no details on whether the radiologists communicated any progress to the higher management suggesting a lack of responsibility on their part. Possible Outcomes and Alternative Solutions While the CEO adopted the approach of preparing a list of issues that needed to be resolved and gave a time of 1 year to the radiology department, it appears that the situation could have been handled in different ways.

By preferring to hire a new radiology team in place of the existing team, the CEO could have created a difficult situation in which the new staff would have been in no position to operate the older equipment until replacements had been installed, thus putting the operations of other departments at risk. Instead, the CEO could have instead identified the least performing radiologist and giving him a limited time (say around 3-4 months) to resolve his unprofessional attitude. Taking corrective action against a subset of the department would have instilled the necessary fear among the remaining employees without jeopardizing the department’s throughput in a significant manner.

Also, the situation where the radiologists did nothing for over a year assuming lack of corrective action would not have arisen and things could have been rectified much earlier. The case study also suggests that the CEO started hiring new staff after the 1-year period offered to the existing radiologists. This recruitment process in turn took over 5 months. Instead of waiting for the entire period to evaluate the staff’s performance, the CEO could have undertaken a mid-year