Transformational leadership in public primary health care

Abstract

Public primary health care services have been under the spotlight consistently. As the first point of access to health care services for the majority of the population, it demands a standard of quality care. In addition, health care clients’ expectations have increased and therefore more is demanded and expected of leaders. However, public health care services are faced with regular patient complaints regarding inefficient health service delivery and inequality to access. As leaderships’ role in health care is the key to improve service provision, their role needs to be explored meticulously. The selected or preferred leadership style impacts vastly not only on the daily functioning of facilities, but on staff well-being. Despite this, it is quite alarming that old and rigid leadership styles are still followed and prevail in health care services. Fundamentally, the health workforce is the most important resource and therefore leadership should motivate employees to achieve set objectives. Given the current state of National Disaster due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leadership becomes of paramount importance. This current state requires some form of agility in the execution and provision of various public health care services. The main purpose of this research was to investigate whether transformational leadership motivate employees to transcend personal goals, improve the performance and enhance the effectiveness of the Mitchell’s Plain Community Health Centre. In addressing the main purpose, this research adopted a qualitative non-empirical approach and utilised content analysis to analyse the data gathered in available scholarly literature and official documents. Key findings revealed that transformational leadership motivate employees to not only achieve organisational goals, but also personal goals. This in turn, improves employee performance, enhances institutional effectiveness and overall productivity. Key recommendations are that leaders should acknowledge individual differences, growth and performance as well as institute a mentorship structure to encourage personal goal setting.