Leadership for change management : critical success factors in leading change in medical imaging departments in major teaching hospitals in NSW

Abstract

Successfully leading change in public medical imaging departments is an enigma that has eluded most public health practitioners particularly in the Australian healthcare context. Research in other contexts has shown that at least 70% of change projects fail to achieve their intended objectives. The area of leadership in medical imaging is an under researched area of healthcare leadership. While various scholars have proposed that strong leadership is required for change management, none of them have fully discussed what this means. This study setting is the medical imaging departments of public hospitals in a New South Wales Local Health District. The primary purpose of this research was to explore the leadership styles and critical success factors that led to successful change management projects or processes. The research utilised a mixed methods approach in a longitudinal study to answer six research questions. There is scant evidence of similar Australian studies utilising the same approach in medical imaging in NSW. In this research, leadership style changes of medical imaging leaders were studied as leaders undertook cycles of successive change management projects over a three-year period. Five data collection rounds were undertaken with the same participant cohort, including two leadership style inventories and three rounds of semi structured interviews. The research found that the dominant leadership style for successful change management in medical imaging in NSW was consultative leadership, contrary to the pre-existing literature on the widely practised leadership styles in healthcare situational, transactional, and transformational styles were the other prominent leadership styles found in this research. This research further found that the use of the key strategies of consultation and engagement; workload management; education and training; communication and planning were critical enablers to project success. Similarly, stakeholder engagement; planning; education and training; resetting expectations and processes and procedures were the key reasons that drive project success in medical imaging. This research also found that the nature of leadership impacted on change management processes in healthcare. For example, a consultative leadership approach positively influenced the change management processes. Following previous change management projects, this research found that medical imaging leaders' leadership styles were influenced by prior experience. Their leadership style was reshaped by learned experience of past change management. This meant that learning leaders achieved better outcomes in successive change management processes.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English